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THE    LIFE  AND  WORK  OF  W.  P.    LETCHWORTH 

Illustrated. 

A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN. 

BOOKS,  CULTURE  AND  CHARACTER. 

A  PRIMER  OF  RIGHT  AND  WRONG. 

A  MULTITUDE  OF  COUNSELLORS.  Being  a  Col- 
lection of  Codes,  Precepts,  and  Rules  of  Life,  from  thf 
Wise  of  all  Ages. 

A  HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  FOR  SEC- 
ONDARY SCHOOLS.     With  Maps. 

A  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND  FOR  THE  USE  OF 
SCHOOLS  AND  ACADEMIES.  With  Topical  Anal- 
yses, Research  Questions,  and  Bibliographical  Notes 
With  i8  Maps  and  150  Illustrations. 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
Boston  and  New  Yokk 


A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 


A  STUDY  OF 
GKEATNESS  IN  MEN 


BY 

J.  N.  LARNED 

Avihor  of  «♦  Books,  Culture,  and  Character,^''  "  Seventy  Centuries 

0/  the  Life  of  Mankind,''  etc. ;  compiler  of  "  Hittory 

for  Ready  Reference  " 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  191 1,  BY  J.  N.  LARNXD 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESKRVXD 

Published  March  igii 


L3ZS 


TO   MY   FRIENDS    AND    ASSOCIATES   OF 

THE    THURSDAY     CLUB,     OP    BUFFALO,     N.    Y., 

ON    WHOSE    INVITATION    AND     UNDER    WHOSE 

AUSPICES     THE     LECTURES     NOW     SOMEWHAT 

EXPANDED     IN    PRINT     WERE    PREPARED    AND 

GIVEN,    IN    1906,    FIRST    AS    A    PUBLIC    COURSE 

AND   THEN   REPEATED    IN   THE    HIGH   SCHOOLS 

P:  OF     THE     CITY,     THIS     VOLUME,      CONTAINING 

^  THEM,    IS   AFFECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED. 
In 
in 


3 

r 


c^ 


910050 


CONTENTS 

I.  What  Goes  into  the  Making  of  a  Great 

Man? 1 

II.  Napoleon:  a  Prodigy,  without  Greatness  .    35 

III.  Cromwell  :  Imperfect  in  Greatness     .    .    .  109 

IV.  Washington:  Impressive  in  Greatness     .    .  169 
V    Lincoln  :  Simplest  in  Greatness 221 


WHAT  GOES  INTO  THE  MAKING 
OF  A  GEEAT  MAN? 


A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS 
IN  MEN 


WHAT  GOES  INTO  THE  MAKING  OF  A 
GREAT  MAN? 

There  is  no  other  writer  who  charms  and 
irritates,  stimulates  and  disappoints  me  so 
often  and  so  equally  as  Carlyle,  in 
what  he  has  written  personally  of  "Hero- 
men.  Nobody  has  ever  glorified  the  °"  '* 
human  spirit  by  loftier  conceptions  of  God- 
likeness  in  it  than  his.  He  held  with  Saint 
Chrysostom,  that  "  the  true  Shekinah,  or  visi- 
ble revelation  of  God,  is  Man."  He  felt,  as 
Novalis  expressed  his  feeling,  that  "  there  is 
but  one  Temple  in  the  Universe,  and  that  is 
the  body  of  man."  "  We,"  he  exclaimed,  "  are 
the  miracle  of  miracles — the  great  inscrutable 
mystery  of  God."  An  overpowering,  awe- 
stricken  recognition  of  sacredness  in  the  Being 
of  Man  is  manifest  in  all  his  contemplation  of 
it,  whenever  he  can  abstract  the  thought ;  and 
it  was  this  very  sublimity  of  his  conception  of 


4      A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

Man,  as  God  would  have  him  to  be,  and  as  God 
empowered  him  to  be,  that  kindled  the  cease- 
less wrath  and  scorn  which  flamed  out  of  Car- 
Ijle  against  all  defacements  and  debasements 
of  the  sanctified  ideal  in  his  mind.  There  is 
something  overpowering  in  the  fierceness  of 
his  contempt  for  the  falsities,  the  meannesses, 
the  quackeries,  the  fripperies,  the  veneerings, 
the  mammon-worshipings,  the  servilities  and 
cowardices  that  honeycomb  so  much  of  human 
character  and  make  so  much  of  human  life  a 
sham.  In  all  literature  I  find  no  other  such 
tonic  for  honesty,  for  sincerity,  for  simple 
downrightness  and  uprightness  of  doing, 
thinking,  feeling,  and  being.  There  is  a  won- 
derful eloquence  in  the  very  epithets  and  ex- 
pletives into  which  he  packs  his  anger  and  his 
scorn. 

In  all  this  Carlyle  is  great,  —  unapproach- 
able, —  the  mighty  prophet  of  a  religion  of 
sincerity  which  needs,  almost  more  than  any 
other,  to  be  preached  in  the  world.  In  this  he 
gives  me  nothing  but  wholesome  stimulation 
and  delight.  The  things  that  discontent  me 
in  his  writings  are  these  two :  first,  a  loose- 
ness of  definition  in  his  mind  for  the  very 
qualities  in  human  character  that  are  at  the 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  GREAT  MAN         5 

bottom  of  his  ideals ;  which  leads,  secondarily, 
to  much  serious  inconsistency  in  his  estimates 
of  individual  men.  In  other  words,  I  cannot 
reconcile  his  normal  conception  of  man  with 
many  of  the  historic  characters  that  he  chooses 
for  the  exemplification  of  it,  because  he  seems 
to  entertain  a  most  undefined  notion  of  some 
qualities  that  are  fundamental  in  his  concep- 
tion, and  to  ascribe  those  qualities  upon 
grounds  which  I  am  not  able  to  understand. 

In  his  lectures  on  "Hero -Worship,"  — 
which  signified,  in  his  use  of  the  expression, 
a  transcendent  admiration  and  deference  due 
to  great  men  from  their  fellows,  —  Carlyle 
says,  again  and  again,  that  "  sincerity,  a  deep, 
great,  genuine  sincerity,  is  the  first  charac- 
teristic of  all  men  in  any  way  heroic  " ;  that 
"hero"  is  to  be  "taken  to  mean  genuine"; 
that  "^it  is  incredible  "  a  great  man  "  should 
have  been  other  than  true."  "  All  the  great 
men  I  ever  heard  of,"  he  declares,  "  have  this 
[sincerity]  as  the  primary  material  of  them." 
Now  that,  if  we  understand  it  correctly,  is  a 
very  great  truth ;  a  truth  of  transcendent  im- 
portance and  vitality;  and  Carlyle  did  im- 
measurable service  to  the  world  in  proclaim- 
ing it,  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  his 


6      A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

life,  with  iteration  and  reiteration,  and  with 
all  the  power  of  the  great  eloquence  at  his 
command.  But  the  ideas  attached  to  those  al- 
most synonymous  words  sincerity  and  genu- 
ineness  are  not  ideas  that  stand  well  alone  in 
our  minds.  They  are  connected  necessarily 
with  ideas  of  something  behind  them,  to  which 
they  refer.  If  we  think  of  a  man  as  being  sin- 
cere, we  are  thinking  of  something  in  his  mo- 
tives of  action  which  we  recognize  as  being  in 
reality  what  it  appears  or  is  professed  to  be  5 
and  our  valuation  of  his  sincerity,  in  forming 
our  general  judgment  and  estimate  of  the 
man,  must  depend  on  our  valuation  of  that 
which  we  find  him  to  be  sincere  in.  He  may 
be  very  sincere  in  some  kind  of  selfishness,  or 
of  egotism,  or  of  ambition,  as  well  as  in  some 
prejudice  or  ill-judgment,  that  blinds  him  to 
its  quality,  and  this  may  have  the  effect  of 
making  him  more  questionable  in  character 
than  if  he  had  no  sincerity  or  genuineness  at 
all.  In  Carlyle's  thinking  there  seems  to  be 
no  adequate  reckoning  of  this  fact.  It  is  im- 
aginative, picturesque  thinking,  —  not  logical, 
but  graphic,  —  reasoning  by  simile  and  illus- 
tration, —  and  the  eloquent  sweep  of  it  often 
carries  a  reader,  as  it  has  carried  the  writer, 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  GREAT  MAN        7 

iike  organ  music,  to  an  impressive  climax  of 
emotion,  but  to  no  substantial  conclusion  of 
thought. 

There  is  a  striking  example  of  this  in  the 
hero-lecture  on  Mahomet,  where  he  calls  upon 
Nature  to  show  us  her  marking  of  what  is 
genuine,  what  is  true,  from  what  is  false. 
**  You  take  wheat,"  he  says,  "  to  cast  into  the 
earth's  bosom :  your  wheat  may  be  mixed  with 
chaff,  chopped  straw,  barn-sweepings,  dust  and 
all  imaginable  rubbish;  no  matter:  you  cast 
it  into  the  kind,  just  earth ;  she  grows  th( 
wheat,  —  the  whole  rubbish  she  silently  ab« 
sorbs,  shrouds  it  in,  says  nothing  of  the  rub- 
bish. The  yellow  wheat  is  growing  there ;  the 
good  earth  is  silent  about  all  the  rest,  —  has 
silently  turned  all  the  rest  to  some  benefit, 
too,  and  makes  no  complaint  about  it.  So 
everywhere  in  Nature !  She  is  true  and  not  a 
lie ;  and  yet  so  great,  and  just,  and  motherly 
in  her  truth.  She  requires  of  a  thing  only 
that  it  he  genuine  of  heart ;  she  will  protect 
it  if  so ;  will  not,  if  not  so."  How  impressive 
a  deep  meaning  there  seems  to  be  in  this 
charming  picture  of  the  just  dealing  of  the 
kindly  earth  with  a  careless  sower's  mixture 
of  rubbish  and  wheat.  But  when  we  scrutinize 


8     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

it,  where  is  the  meaning  that  Carlyle  must 
have  intended  to  convey  ?  What  Nature-mark 
of  genuineness  has  the  earth  put  upon  the 
wheat  ?  The  wheat  is  but  genuine  in  its  kind, 
and  no  more  so  than  the  rubbish,  in  its  kind, 
is  genuine,  and  the  earth  has  dealt  with  each 
according  to  its  kind.  If  tares  are  in  the  mix- 
ture she  will  protect  them  and  give  them 
growth,  as  she  does  the  wheat,  and  there  will 
be  the  same  truth  or  sincerity  in  the  one 
growth  as  in  the  other;  but  we  shall  value 
them  respectively  according  to  their  fruit. 

It  is  just  here  that  Carlyle's  teachings,  up- 
lifting and  inspiring  as  the  doctrine  and  the 
Carlyle's  Spirit  of  them  are,  seem  to  drift 
sMker"  often  to  couf usious  that  weaken  the 
Admirations,  great  influence  they  ought  to  have. 
The  bottom  differences  of  character  and  mo- 
tive which  actuate  and  modulate  all  that  is 
veritable  or  sincere  in  the  disposition  of  men 
are  not  discriminated  as  they  need  to  be.  In 
the  graphic  method  of  his  thought  there 
is  a  looseness  of  texture  which  gives  too  free 
a  play  to  partialities  and  prejudices  in  him- 
self, and  they  mislead  his  judgment  many 
times.  It  was  in  his  nature  to  admire  a  domi- 
nating, masterful  temper  in  men,  and  to  ad- 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  GREAT  MAN         9 

mire  it  so  excessively  that  he  could  not  do 
justice  to  other  forms  of  human  force.  He 
found  it  easier  to  see  evidences  of  a  sincere 
and  great  spirit  in  that  autocratic  and  dog- 
matic disposition  to  command,  than  to  see 
them  in  any  less  egoistic  display.  He  could 
not  speak  of  Hampden  or  Washington  with- 
out disparagement ;  but  he  fairly  compelled 
himself,  though  with  undisguised  repugnance, 
to  discover  enough  glimpses  of  what  he  could 
take  to  be  sincerity  in  Napoleon  for  warrant- 
ing the  award  of  a  pedestal  in  his  gallery  of 
heroes  to  that  most  masterful  bully  of  modern 
times.  He  describes  Cromwell  as  a  "great 
savage  Baresark,"  and  declares  in  the  same 
breath  :  "  I  plead  guilty  to  valuing  such  a  man 
beyond  all  other  sorts  of  men."  It  is  fair  to 
infer  that  the  baresark  fighting  temper  in 
the  great  Puritan  captain  is  what  drew  his 
admiration  first  and  most ;  and  this  leaning  of 
his  likings  toward  a  rough,  dictatorial  energy 
of  spirit  and  action  appears  everywhere  in  his 
discussion  of  men.  So  far  he  joins  himself  to 
the  very  mobs  of  mankind,  —  to  those  mobs 
whose  senselessness  was  the  perennial  object 
of  his  scorn.  They  adore  the  baresarkers,  the 
hard  fighters,  the  conquerors,  the  dictators, 


10     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

**  beyond  all  other  sorts  of  men."  It  is  the 
primitive  hero-worship  in  mankind,  natural 
now  only  to  the  barbaric  taints  that  linger  in 
our  civilization,  and  that  vulgarize  such  part 
of  all  society  as  deserves  to  be  called  "  the 
mob."  It  is  a  partiality  that  resists  reason, 
culture,  Christianity ;  for  the  rank  roots  of  it 
are  in  the  paganism  and  the  ignorance  of  the 
darkest  ages  of  the  world.  That  Carlyle  should 
give  way  to  it,  and  lend  his  powerful  eloquence 
to  the  encouragement  of  it,  is  a  lamentable 
thing.  It  gravely  vitiates  the  influence  of  the 
grand  doctrine  of  greatness  in  human  charac- 
ter which  he  preached  as  it  was  never  preached 
by  another  man. 

I  bring  his  teachings  into  discussion  here, 
at  the  outset  of  my  offering  of  some  thoughts 
on  the  subject  of  great  men,  because  he  is,  on 
this  subject,  the  unapproachable  master,  —  the 
inspired  preacher,  —  the  prophet.  I  come  to  it 
as  his  disciple,  though  not  an  unquestioning 
disciple.  I  wish  to  build  some  discourse  on 
what  is  fundamental  in  his  doctrines,  in  order 
to  appeal  against  the  aberrations  of  temper 
which  sometimes,  in  his  application  of  those 
doctrines,  led  his  judgment  astray. 

It  was  Carlyle's  contention  that  the  world 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  GREAT  MAN     11 

is  losing,  or  has  lost,  its  due  appreciation  of 
great  men ;  has  ceased  to  yield  them  due  trib- 
ute of  veneration,  due  submission  to  their 
rightful  lead  and  guidance,  and  does  even,  as 
he  declared,  "  deny  the  desirableness  of  great 
men."  I  hold  the  accusation  to  be  untrue.  The 
finest  trait  I  can  see  in  human  nature — so 
fine  that  it  often  surprises  me  —  is  that  shown 
in  the  generous  spirit  with  which  men,  almost 
universally,  admire  and  honor  and  defer  to  the 
fortunate  few  who  are  raised  to  a  shining  emi- 
nence among  their  fellows  by  surpassing  endow- 
ments of  mind.  As  a  rule,  there  is  no  grudging 
of  a  manly  homage  from  the  lower  to  the  higher 
ranks  in  that  gradation  of  minds  and  souls 
which  Nature  has  arranged.  Nor  is  there  any 
fawning  or  self-seeking  in  it,  since  the  poet, 
the  artist,  the  savant,  receive  it  as  freely  as 
the  powerful  masters  of  state.  To  me  it  seems 
to  be  just  a  glad  and  grateful  welcome  of  teach- 
ing and  leading,  with  a  generous  pride  in 
the  knowledge  that  human  faculties  and  forces 
can  be  raised  to  so  noble  a  pitch. 

I  see  no  lack,  in  measure  or  kind,  of  such 
homage  as  it  is  good  for  humanity  to  render 
to  its  great  men.  What  I  do  see  is  a  need  of 
standards  for  gauging  altitudes  in  character 


12    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

and  forces  in  genius,  so  far,  at  the  least,  as 
to  distinguish  what  is  only  surprising  or  im- 
possible posing  from  what  is  really  great. 
H^a"^*°'  The  difference  here  is  vast,  going 
Quality.  to  the  very  bottom  of  the  good  we 
can  get  from  the  gift  of  great  men.  That  good 
is  in  the  reverence  of  spirit,  the  loving  admi- 
ration and  the  trust  wherewith  we  can  open 
heart  and  mind  in  ourselves  to  the  influence, 
the  example,  the  leading,  of  characters  that 
are  august  in  their  superiority  to  our  own.  We 
miss  it  if  our  impressions  from  what  is  merely 
extraordinary  in  faculty  and  achievement  are 
confused  with  our  feeling  for  what  is  great. 
Qualities  and  powers  that  have  little  or  nothing 
of  a  transcendent  superiority  in  their  nature 
may  be  of  such  marvelous  effectiveness,  in  the 
work  or  the  strifes  of  the  world,  that  men  are 
lifted  by  them  to  what  seem  to  be  the  topmost 
heights  of  historical  immortality.  Often,  too, 
it  happens  that  great  and  mean  attributes,  the 
admirable  and  the  contemptible,  are  so  mixed 
in  the  constitution  of  a  man  of  power  that  we 
cannot  do  homage  to  him  in  the  higher  view 
without  a  blinding  of  ourselves  to  the  lower 
which  does  us  grave  moral  harm. 

In  some  instances,  that  neutralization  of 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  GREAT  MAN     13 

exalting  powers  in  a  man  by  countervailing 
meannesses  has  been  appreciated  with  singu- 
lar justice  by  the  public  opinion  of  the  world. 
For  example,  John  Churchill,  Duke  of  Marl- 
borough, was  unquestionably  the  ablest  soldier 
(Cromwell  excepted,  perhaps)  that  England 
or  Great  Britain  has  ever  produced,  and  his 
victories,  checking  the  aggressive  career  of 
France  under  Louis  XIV,  were  the  most  bril- 
liant ever  won  by  British  arms ;  but  the  utter 
baseness  of  the  man  was  more  than  even  mil- 
itary glory  could  gild,  and  he  remains  a  more 
inconspicuous  figure  in  history  than  any  other 
warrior  of  his  very  high  quality  that  I  can  call 
to  mind. 

For  another  example  I  may  point  to  the  sec- 
ond of  the  Caesars,  Octavius,  called  Augustus, 
whose  rank  in  history  would  assuredly  be  much 
higher  than  it  is  if  there  had  not  been  traits 
in  his  character  which  are  specially  offensive 
to  the  better  part  of  mankind.  He  was  the 
architect  of  the  Roman  Empire,  for  the  build- 
ing of  which  Julius  Csesar  had  but  cleared  the 
ground.  His  work  was  a  masterpiece  of  shrewd- 
ness, prudence,  patience,  and  political  skill. 
In  its  proof  of  extraordinary  abilities  it  may 
not  be  entirely  comparable  with  the  more  ver- 


14    A  STUDY  OP  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

satile  performances  of  Julius  Caesar,  as  poli- 
tician and  soldier ;  but,  if  faults  of  character  in 
the  two  men  could  be  judged  with  equal  char- 
ity by  the  world,  I  doubt  if  Julius  Caesar  and 
Augustus  Caesar  would  stand  far  apart  in  fame 
and  esteem.  Julius  was  a  man  of  many  vices, 
few  scruples,  few  virtues  of  a  positive  kind ; 
but  the  manner  of  his  sinning  was  so  open, 
so  frank,  and  he  carried  himself  through  it  so 
gallantly,  that  it  has  seemed,  in  common  views, 
to  be  half  rectified  by  the  manliness  of  his  air. 
He  was  equally  capable  of  a  high  magnanim- 
ity or  a  merciless  cruelty,  according  to  their 
bearing  on  the  objects  he  pursued.  In  a  word, 
his  nature  was  impressively  large  in  scale, 
morally  and  immorally,  as  well  as  intellectually 
and  energetically;  too  large  for  meanness, 
trickishness,  or  anything  that  can  be  despised. 
Augustus,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  man  of 
furtive  ways,  stealthy  movements,  hidden  aims ; 
a  cold-brained  schemer,  of  marvelous  sagacity 
and  ingenuity,  but  trickish  and  considerably 
despicable  in  the  very  ingeniousness  with  which 
he  picked  and  pocketed,  out  of  the  wreckage  of 
the  old  republic,  those  broken  bits  of  consti- 
tutional authority  that  went  into  his  remark- 
able patchwork  of  imperial  power.   He  has 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  GREAT  MAN      15 

suffered,  accordingly,  in  historical  estimation, 
much  more  than  he  would  have  suffered  from 
detestable  crimes  committed  boldly,  in  an  open 
way.  So  impossible  does  it  seem  to  be  to  as- 
sociate impressions  of  greatness  and  of  mean- 
ness with  the  same  man.  Wickedness  and 
greatness  appear  to  be  far  more  compatible 
ideas. 

When  I  spoke  just  now  of  standards  for 
gauging  character  and  genius  I  used  a  word 
that  means  more  in  strictness  than 

Ratlmal 

was  in  my  thought.  We  are  dealing  Prinoipiei  oi 
here  with  quantities  and  qualities 
which  no  metric  system  will  apply  to,  and 
gauges  and  standards,  in  the  precise  sense,  are 
out  of  the  question.  But  I  am  persuaded  that 
it  is  possible  to  formulate  some  definite  prin- 
ciples of  judgment  that  will  test  the  superior- 
ity in  men  of  fame  reasonably,  affording  a 
tenable  ground  for  some  satisfying  classifica- 
tion and  comparison  among  the  "  heroes  "  of 
mankind.  Especially,  I  think  it  practicable  and 
most  important  to  draw  some  lines  of  principle 
for  the  distinction  which  ought  to  be  preserved 
between  men  who  are  no  more  than  extraor- 
dinary and  men  who  are  essentially  great.  The 
simplest  psychology  we  can  employ  —  the  sim« 


16    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

plest  analysis  we  can  make  of  the  factors  of 
character  and  power  in  man  —  will  lead  us  to 
the  fundamental  distinctions  we  need.  Those 
factors  lie  wholly  in  three  groups,  namely  :  — 

The  Ethical,  or  Moral ; 

The  Kational,  or  purely  Intellectual ; 

The  Dynamic,  or  Energetic. 

The  first  of  these  groups  takes  in  all  that 
gives  a  moral  quality  to  character  and  con- 
duct in  men ;  the  second  includes  reason  and 
imagination,  with  whatever  acts  in  the  mind 
toward  the  operation  of  both  ;  in  the  third  we 
place  such  forces  of  feeling  and  volition  as 
energize  human  action,  by  ardors  and  enthusi- 
asms, by  passions  and  desires,  by  resolution 
and  will. 

Now,  the  factors  in  the  moral  and  intel- 
lectual groups  belong  distinctively  to  the  hu- 
man constitution,  while  those  of  the  energizing 
group  do  not ;  and  this  most  significant  and 
important  difference  is  seldom  taken  into  ac- 
count, as  it  needs  to  be.  In  his  moral  being 
Man  shares  absolutely  nothing  with  the  beasts ; 
in  the  intellectual  he  shares  a  very  little ;  but 
in  the  neural  heats  and  tempers  which  ener- 
gize his  active  life  he  shares  much  with  the 
lower  animal  world.    When  he  thinks,  when 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  GREAT  MAN      17 

he  forms  plans  of  action,  when  he  obeys  or 
consciously  disobeys  any  ethical  rule  of  life, 
he  is  simply  and  only  human ;  but  when  feel- 
ing comes  into  play,  and  forces  are  moved  in 
him  which  make  him  bold  or  timid,  resolute 
or  hesitating,  hot  or  cold  in  temperament, 
tense  or  lax  in  effort,  according  to  their  in- 
teraction and  their  strength,  then  he  is  the 
man-animal,  exploiting  his  double  nature,  and 
actuated  largely  from  the  carnal  side.  Ob- 
viously, therefore,  the  elements  of  power  and 
of  character  that  come  from  this  source,  of 
mixed  animality  and  mind,  are  lower  in  essen- 
tial nobility  than  those  which  originate  purely 
in  the  intellect  and  the  moral  sense.  Indeed, 
we  may  say  that  they  have  no  character  and 
no  worth  of  their  own,  but  derive  their  whole 
importance  in  human  nature  from  the  moral 
dispositions  and  intellectual  faculties  that  they 
serve.  If  not  aimed  by  his  reason,  inspired  by 
his  imagination,  motived  by  his  conscience, 
wherein  do  the  enersries  of  a  strons:  man  dif- 
f er  from  the  energies  in  a  beast  of  prey  ? 

Plainly,  then,  the  essential  factors  in  char- 
acter, which  cannot  be  rated  low  in  a  right 
conception  of  greatness  among  men,  are  the 
moral  and  the  intellectual,  and  the  factors  of 


18    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN    ^ 

energy  have  importance  only  as  servants  of 
these,  appointed  to  give  them  activity  and 

strength.  The  conception  of  a  per- 
pertaoted       lected  man  demands  not  opij  the 

inclusion  of  them  all,  but  .demands 
that  the  ethical  motives  shall  be  dominant  in 
his  life.  This  is  not  theory ;  it  is  a  fact  to 
which  the  judgment  and  experience  of  the  lead- 
ing races  of  mankind  have  been  testifying  for 
nineteen  centuries,  at  the  least.  For  us,  who 
dwell  in  Christendom,  there  is  one  ideal  of 
perfection  in  human  character,  realized  in 
Jesus  the  Nazarene,  which  most  of  us  accept. 
Whether  we  look  upon  Jesus  as  a  purely  hu- 
man figure,  or  see  God  incarnate  in  His  per- 
son, we  are  generally  of  one  mind  in  acknow- 
ledging that  the  conceivable  man  without 
blemish  is  represented  uniquely  in  His  life. 
If  we  accept  Him  as  the  type  of  a  perfected 
humanity,  we  can  entertain  no  ideal  of  human 
greatness  which  mutilates  that  type.  This  does 
not  imply  an  excessive  rating  of  moral  attri- 
butes, for  those  attributes  in  Jesus  were  only 
proportioned  to  others  as  I  am  arguing  that 
they  ought  to  be  in  every  man  of  acknow- 
ledged greatness.  By  habit  of  thought  we  as- 
sociate Him  so  exclusively  with  emotions  of 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  GREAT  MAN      19 

religion  and  ideas  of  moral  purity  that  we  are 
apt  to  lose  sight  of  His  perfections  in  every 
other  attribute  of  mind.  Jesus  exhibits  to  us, 
not  merely  the  celestial  spirit  and  the  tran- 
scendent purity  which  have  seemed  to  be  di- 
vine, but  he  shows  us  every  endowment  of 
humanity  at  its  best.  If  his  parables  and  dis- 
courses had  come  to  us  with  no  mark  of  as- 
cribed divinity  on  their  authorship,  I  am  sure 
we  should  have  given  them  the  highest  of  all 
places  in  the  precious  literature  of  the  world. 
What  other  poet  has  joined  imagination  to 
reason  in  forms  so  perfect,  with  effects  so 
simple,  so  powerful,  so  beautiful,  to  ends  so 
exalted,  as  Jesus,  in  the  parables  by  which  He 
taught  ?  From  what  other  philosophy  of  life 
has  mankind  received  so  much  light,  so  much 
leading,  so  much  help,  as  from  these  parables, 
and  from  the  sayings  of  the  Master,  and  from 
His  answers  to  the  questioning  of  followers 
and  foes  ?  What  other  words  that  letters  have 
preserved  for  us  are  so  pregnant  and  so  com- 
pact with  meaning,  yet  so  simple  in  the  utter- 
ance, so  straight  to  their  purpose,  so  entirely 
without  waste  ?  It  is  only  a  slight  record  that 
we  have,  of  a  few  passages  in  the  brief  life  of 
the  great  teacher,  —  notes  of  what  fell  on  a 


20    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

few  occasions  from  His  lips,  —  repeated  in  four 
forms,  with  little  variations,  and  possibly  all 
from  one  source.  If  we  throw  these  four  gos- 
pel reports  into  one,  canceling  the  repetitions, 
we  may  have  all  that  we  know  of  the  talk  of 
Jesus  in  a  little  printed  pamphlet,  so  small  that 
an  eloquent  preacher  of  the  present  day  would 
almost  fill  its  pages  with  his  Sunday  discourse. 
What  a  wonderful  bit  of  literature  it  is  !  Not 
as  revelation,  but  as  literature,  there  is  nothing 
else  so  small  in  the  mountain-heaps  of  our 
books  that  holds  nearly  so  much ;  nothing 
else  so  unerring  in  thought,  so  pure  in  feel- 
ing, so  rich  in  imagination,  so  perfect  in  the 
beauty  of  simple  speech.  Intellectually,  then, 
as  well  as  morally,  our  ideal  of  a  perfected 
humanity  is  fulfilled  in  Jesus.  Nor  was  He 
less  complete  on  that  side  of  his  human  na- 
ture which  gave  its  dauntless  energy  to  the 
great  mission  he  performed.  Calmly,  patiently, 
with  no  faltering,  no  fear,  no  passion,  he  went 
straight  on  to  the  end  of  what  he  had  to  do, 
examphng  the  perfection  of  energy,  the  per- 
fection of  courage,  the  perfection  of  will. 

I  say,  then,  that  our  ideal  man,  who  cannot 
be  otherwise  than  our  ideally  Great  Man,  is 
surpassingly  endowed  in  all  ways,  but  ruled 


THE  MAKDsG  OF  A  GREAT  MAN      21 

from  the  sovereign  seat  of  moral  motives  in  the 
whole  exercise  of  his  powers;  and  the  just 
measure  of  actual  greatness  in  all  men  of  ex- 
alted fame  is  by  the  nearness  of  their  approach 
to  that  ideal. 

Unhappily,  this  Christian  standard  of  human 
superiority  is  rejected  by  what  seems  to  be  a 
vast  majority  of  mankind;  and  it  is  the  sin  of 
Carlyle  that  he  has  stimulated  its  preference 
for  the  rude  animalities  of  force  and  weight, 
in  character,  over  the  finer  energies  and  grav- 
ities of  spirit  and  mind  that  make  less  commo- 
tion in  history,  but  are  more  profoundly  felt. 
If  the  world  at  large  should  be  asked  for  a 
ballot  to  name  the  greatest  man  of  all  time, 
I  am  afraid  that  the  Corsican  warrior  who 
scourged  Europe  in  the  last  century  would 
head  the  poll.  Hereafter  I  purpose  to  examine 
that  astonishing  character  and  career,  which 
have  so  fascinated  and  deluded  mankind,  and 
to  question  whether  we  can  count  Napoleon 
Bonaparte  among  the  great  of  mankind  with- 
out offering  an  indignity  to  the  human  race. 

If  it  is  true,  as  I  claim,  that  extraordinary 
endowments  cannot  impart  greatness  to  men 
when  the  quality  of  greatness  is  not  in  the  endow- 
ments themselves,  it  is  equally  true  that  great 


22    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

deeds  do  not  signify  greatness  in  the  doers  of 
them,  unless  they  are  the  product  of  great 
Men  not  qualities  or  powers.  Very  often  they 
Sy*SSi**^*  are  not  so.  Uncontrollable  circum- 
Deeds.  stances  do  sometimes  give  small  re- 

sults to  great  endeavors,  and  sometimes  bring 
stupendous  effects  out  of  things  done  with 
little  genius  and  moderate  energy  of  will.  A 
deed  thus  exalted  by  its  consequences  does 
not  necessarily  entitle  the  doer  to  that  homage 
we  owe  and  delight  in  paying  to  the  master- 
spirits of  the  race.  We  need  not  begrudge 
to  him  his  fortunate  fame  —  the  glory  of  his 
association  with  the  great  event  —  if  we  do 
not  allow  it  to  confuse  our  notion  of  great 
men.  It  is  right  that  he  should  be  memor- 
able and  honored  for  what  he  did ;  but  much 
more  it  is  right  that  we  should  keep  a  dis- 
tinction in  our  esteem  between  the  man  of  a 
great  deed  and  the  intrinsically  great  man. 
It  pleases  us  often  to  construct  lists  of  "  the 
greatest  men  of  all  time," — the  hundred  great- 
est or  the  fifty  greatest,  —  and  we  like  to  de- 
bate over  them  and  dispute  about  them ;  but 
I  never  see  such  a  list  without  noting  this  con- 
fused valuation  of  men  by  the  value  of  events 
which  they  brought  about. 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  GREAT  MAN      23 

For  example :  There  is  now  no  doubt  that 
the  obscure  Norwegian  known  as  Eric  the 
Eed  sailed  westward  from  Iceland,  in  the 
tenth  century,  and  found  Greenland,  and  that 
Leif,  his  son,  sailed  still  farther  into  the  west- 
ern ocean  and  found  America.  But  the  exploit 
of  Leif  Ericsson  ended  there.  Nothing  came 
of  it ;  it  had  no  consequences.  Europe  knew 
no  more  of  America  than  it  had  known  before. 
Five  centuries  later  another  bold  voyager 
sailed  westward  from  the  Old  World  and 
found  America, — audio!  all  human  history 
was  changed.  One  of  the  transforming  events 
in  the  life  of  mankind  had  occurred,  and  every 
happening  to  humanity  since  has  taken  some 
difference  from  it,  of  intention  or  effect.  Sep- 
arate the  two  achievements,  of  Columbus  and 
of  Leif,  from  all  thought  of  consequences 
which  neither  Columbus  nor  Leif  had  in  view, 
and  by  how  much  do  they  differ  in  measure 
or  kind  ?  Yet  the  one  has  taken  on  the  ap- 
pearance of  an  extraordinarily  great  achieve- 
ment by  an  extraordinarily  great  man,  and  the 
other  stands  in  no  such  light. 

Let  me  cite  another  more  striking  example : 
Alexander  of  Macedonia,  styled  Alexander  the 
Great,  never  fails  to  be  named  in  a  list  of  "  the 


24    A  STUDY   OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

greatest  men."  He  ran  a  career  of  conquest 
which  opened,  in  the  history  of  the  world,  a 
train  of  influences  more  profound  and  farther 
reaching  than  any  other  that  ever  came  from 
such  a  cause.  Western  Asia  and  Egypt  were 
mastered,  as  a  consequence,  by  the  Greek 
spirit  and  Greek  mind,  and  became  the  seat 
from  which  they  acted  on  the  subsequent 
world-empire  of  Rome  as  they  could  never 
have  acted  from  their  native  land.  They  pre- 
pared the  soil  in  which  the  seeds  of  Christian- 
ity were  planted  first;  we  can  almost  say  that 
they  established  the  conditions  which  made 
it  possible  for  the  mission  of  Jesus  to  have 
success.  In  the  light  which  these  great,  ever- 
lasting results  from  his  conquests  reflect  back 
upon  him,  Alexander  appears,  very  naturally 
and  rightly,  as  a  famous,  shining  figure  in 
history;  but  not  necessarily  as  a  great  man. 
In  what  he  did  there  is  nothing  to  show 
greatly  surpassing  qualities  or  powers.  He 
was  the  brilliantly  energetic  son  of  a  father 
much  abler  than  himself.  With  an  army  which 
his  father,  Philip,  had  created,  employing  a 
tactical  system  which  his  father  had  perfected, 
wielding  the  Hellenic  energies  which  his  fa^ 
ther  had  mastered,  he  carried  out  an  under- 


THE  MAKING  OF  A   GREAT  MAN     25 

taking  which  his  father  had  prepared  for,  and 
overthrew  a  decayed  empire,  which  seems  to 
have  been  ready  to  fall  at  any  vigorous  touch. 
Seventy  years  before  Alexander,  a  body  of 
Greek  mercenaries,  enlisted  by  a  rebellious 
Persian  prince,  the  younger  Cyrus,  had  been 
led  from  Asia  Minor  to  Babylonia,  and  then, 
on  the  death  of  their  employer,  had  made  the 
immortal  "retreat  of  the  Ten  Thousand,"  un- 
der Xenophon,  from  the  lower  Euphrates  to 
the  Euxine,  with  moderate  loss.  The  experience 
of  Xenophon  had  proved  the  hollowness  of 
the  show  of  empire  which  the  monarch  at 
Susa  kept  up,  and  almost  guaranteed  success 
to  Alexander's  attack.  We  need  not  deny 
that  the  young  king  of  Macedonia  moved  his 
forces  with  admirable  energy  and  fought  his 
battles  with  an  admirable  skill;  but  we  may 
reasonably  doubt  that  the  highest  order  of 
military  genius  was  required  for  the  routing 
of  such  armies  as  the  Persians  brought  into 
the  field,  against  Greek  veterans,  serried  in 
the  Greek  phalanx. 

In  character  it  is  certain  that  Alexander 
showed  little  dignity  or  strength.  He  yielded 
to  caprices  of  temper  and  inclinations  of  ap- 
petite with  no  self-command.    He  was  over- 


26    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

come  like  a  child  or  a  barbarian  with  the 
intoxication  of  his  success,  and  lost  the  level 
sanity  which  was  the  distinction  of  a  culti- 
vated Greek.  Of  political  ability  there  is  little 
sign  in  his  brief  career.  All  that  followed  the 
actual  breaking  of  Persian  sovereignty  in  the 
so-called  Empire  of  Alexander  was  the  work 
of  his  generals,  who  carved  it  in  pieces  and 
divided  it  among  themselves.  The  Macedo- 
nian conqueror,  in  fact,  was  a  man  of  brilhant 
gifts,  who  played  a  striking  part  in  history, 
becoming  the  prime  agent  in  producing  a 
movement  of  events  which  proved  to  be  of 
stupendous  importance  to  the  future  of  the 
world.  Let  us  honor  him  in  that  view  of  his 
relation  to  history,  without  awarding  him  a 
seat  in  the  august  company  of  "the  greatest 
men  of  all  time." 

In  the  history  of  mechanical  invention  there 
are  not  a  few  instances  of  fame  so  exalted 
that  it  seems  to  imply  greatness  in  the  win- 
ners of  it,  but  does  not  yield  that  mean- 
ing when  scrutinized  closely.  Inventions  that 
we  recognize  as  surpassingly  great  take  their 
impressive  proportions  from  the  magnitude 
and  importance  of  the  consequences  that  came 
from  them,  rather  than  from  any  transcend- 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  GREAT  MAN      27 

ency  of  genius  in  the  inventors.  The  most 
striking  example  I  can  cite  is  afforded  by  the 
invention  of  printing  with  movable  type.  No- 
thing done  among  men  since  they  came  into 
the  world  has  been  the  cause  of  more  prodi- 
gious effects ;  and  so,  if  we  try  to  measure  him 
by  the  almost  immeasurable  import  of  his 
work,  the  father  of  the  modern  printing  art, 
whether  he  be  Gutenberg,  or  Laurens  Coster, 
or  another,  must  rank  with  the  very  greatest 
of  men.  That,  however,  is  a  plainly  unreason- 
able valuation  of  the  man ;  because  the  inven- 
tion, in  itself,  as  a  mechanical  exploit,  could 
not  call  for  the  exercise  of  surpassingly  high 
powers  of  the  human  mind. 

Gutenberg,  Columbus,  Alexander  of  Mace- 
don,  and  more  whom  I  could  name,  form  a 
class  to  be  described,  I  think,  as  men  of  for- 
tunate fame, — made  greatly  famous,  that  is,  by 
greatly  important  achievements,  but  who  are 
not  of  the  peerage  of  the  personally  great, 
whose  eminence  they  seem  to  share. 

There  is  another  class  in  history,  somewhat 
kindred  to  this,  of  men  fortunately  born,  who 
receive  personal  credit,  more  or  less,  for 
grandeurs  that  are  no  more,  in  reality,  than 
an  inherited  robe.  The  many-crowned  emperor 


28      A   STUDY  OF   GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

Charles  the  Fifth  is  one  who  comes  readily  to 
mind.  He  was  born  to  a  lofty  position,  and 
could  not  be  less  than  the  most  conspicuous 
personage  of  an  extraordinary  time,  at  the  cli- 
max of  the  passage  of  the  world  from  its  me- 
diaeval to  its  modern  plane.  The  accident  of 
birth  not  only  gave  him  many  crowns,  and  won 
for  him  the  prestige  of  the  great  title  of  the 
Caesars,  but  it  put  the  wealth  of  the  Nether- 
lands and  the  rich  first  plunder  of  Mexico 
and  Peru  into  his  hands.  He  had  the  opportu- 
nity and  the  means  for  being  one  of  the  great 
master-makers  of  history,  —  and  what  did  he 
do  with  them,  except  to  resist  with  futility 
the  new  movements  of  human  progress  which 
he  could  not  stop  ?  Excepting  a  work  of  ruin 
in  Spain  and  Italy  and  of  death  and  misery  in 
the  Netherlands,  which  he  left  to  be  finished 
by  his  hateful  son,  what  were  the  fruits  of  his 
life  ?  I  do  not  know  of  any  that  can  glorify 
the  man. 

Where,  then,  shall  we  look  for  the  final  mark 
and  measure  of  a  really  great  superiority  in 
one  man  over  the  mass  of  his  fellow  men? 
We  cannot  hope  to  discover  it  by  any  abstract, 
indefinite  valuing  of  minds ;  for  we  have  no 
knowledge  of  the  human  mind  that  will  war* 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  GREAT  MAN      29 

rant  us  in  attempting  a  comparative  rating  of 
the  differing  faculties  and  forces  that  make 
it  up,  any  farther  than  along  the  The  True 
lines  of  division  that   I  have  indi-  Measure  of  a 

ureat 

cated,  between  moral,  intellectual,  superiority, 
and  energetic  powers.  So  far  as  we  know, 
the  varied  functions  of  mind  are  equal  in 
all  that  they  signify,  per  se,  of  intellectual 
rank  among  men.  In  poetry  and  in  imitative 
art,  in  science  and  in  philosophy,  in  statesman- 
ship and  in  war,  men  may  be  exercising  gifts  of 
intellect  that  would  rank  them  in  indistinguish- 
able equality  if  we  had  a  gauge  and  standard 
of  brain-power  to  apply,  —  which  we  have  not. 
But,  instinctively,  we  know  that  such  a  stand- 
ard would  not  be  the  true  one,  if  we  had  it 
at  command;  for,  instinctively,  we  incline 
always,  I  think,  in  our  thoughtful  estimates 
of  remarkable  men,  to  consider  first  and  most 
the  worth  and  dignity  of  the  objects  on  which 
they  expend  their  powers.  This  seems  to  be 
the  instinctive  inclination  of  our  better  judg- 
ment, though  we  do  not  obey  it  consistently, 
as  we  ought  to  do.  We  leave  our  minds  too 
open  to  the  fascination  of  astonishing  exploits, 
whether  they  are  worthy  or  unworthy  of  the 
intellect  and  energy  employed ;  but  I  doubt  if 


30    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

we  can  ever  think  seriously  of  the  matter  with- 
out concluding  that  there  must  be  a  great  mo- 
tive in  what  a  man  does,  — a  great  object  in 
the  use  of  great  powers,  —  a  great  character 
enfolding  and  embodying  the  great  intellect  or 
the  great  energy  we  contemplate,  —  to  make 
a  really  great  man. 

More  and  more,  in  my  reading  of  history,  I 
am  drawn  to  the  contemplation  of  character 
and  motive,  as  the  factors  to  be  weighed  and 
determined  in  all  right  estimates  of  those  who 
have  acted  important  parts  on  the  historic 
stage.  More  and  more  I  am  led  to  compare 
men  of  fame  and  measure  them,  one  by  an- 
other, on  that  basis  of  the  ethical  quality  in 
themselves  and  the  ethical  purpose  in  what 
they  do.  Otherwise,  I  should  be  forced  to 
yield  my  homage  of  admiration  and  defer- 
ence to  many  men  who  have  defiled  their 
abilities  in  evil  exploits  or  detestable  careers. 
I  should  have  to  reckon  Cortes  among  my  he- 
roes, and  glorify  his  conquest  of  Mexico ;  for 
it  is  hard  to  find  in  history  a  more  consum- 
mate performance  of  its  kind.  The  perfection 
of  judgment,  of  energy,  of  resoluteness,  of  re- 
sourcefulness, is  exhibited  in  every  emergency 
of  the  audacious  undertaking.  In  the  practi- 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  GREAT  MAN      31 

cal  view,  it  is  as  flawless  an  achievement,  per- 
haps, as  Caesar's  conquest  of  Gaul.  But  with 
rapine  for  its  motive,  the  vainglory  of  con- 
quest for  its  object,  what  is  its  claim  to  any- 
thing but  detestation  and  contempt  ? 

Then,  again,  I  should  feel  compelled  to  seat 
the  inexplicable,  cold-blooded  Sulla  quite  high 
in  the  temple  of  my  hero-worship;  because 
nothing  in  the  story  of  Rome  is  more  wonder- 
ful to  me  than  the  manner  of  his  taking,  using, 
and  dropping  dictatorial  power ;  but  when  no 
discernible  purpose,  except  to  defeat  and  de- 
stroy his  opponents,  is  discoverable  in  what 
he  did,  I  am  absolved  from  the  admiration  I 
might  otherwise  yield. 

Briefly  summed,  the  things  needful  to  the 
making  of  a  great  man,  in  the  view  I  have 
suggested,  are  these  three :  — 

(1)  Great  endowments,  so  much  beyond  the 
gifts  of  faculty  or  power  to  common  men  that 
they  surprise  our  wonder  and  admiration,  what- 
ever their  nature  may  be. 

(2)  Great  opportunity  for  the  adequate  ex- 
ercise and  demonstration  of  such  endowments, 
without  which  they  remain  undeveloped,  as 
well  as  unknown.  I  cannot  doubt  that  the 
possibilities  of  greatness  have  existed  in  many 


32    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

men  who  lived  in  circumstances  which  gave 
no  call  and  afforded  no  opening  for  the  best 
and  most  they  could  do.  For  some  kinds  of 
noble  gift  this  may  not  be  true.  A  "  mute  in- 
glorious Milton  "  may  not  be  possible,  since  no 
circumstances  need  silence  the  song  of  a  poet 
who  is  truly  inspired.  But  a  Washington, 
whose  country  had  no  need  of  the  great  ser- 
vice he  could  give  it,  may  easily  have  lived  a 
life  of  modest  usefulness  in  some  provincial 
circle  and  died,  not  only  with  no  discovery  of 
his  potential  greatness,  but  with  no  develop- 
ment of  the  potency  itself.  The  call  to  action 
which  he  did  not  receive  would  be  needed  to 
make  him  great. 

(3)  Great  motives  and  purposes  in  the  use 
of  whatever  the  great  endowments  may  be,  so 
that  they  be  not  wasted  on  worthless  employ- 
ments, or  defiled  by  an  evil  use. 

These,  in  my  view,  are  the  distinguishing 
conditions  of  all  greatness  in  men,  whatever 
the  field  may  be  in  which  their  eminence  is 
won.  The  few  examples  of  life  and  character 
that  I  have  chosen  for  special  study  in  this 
view  are  wholly  from  one  theatre  of  renown ; 
and  I  have  chosen  them  so,  not  because  I  would 
give  a  leading  importance  to  that  stage  which 


THE  MAKING  OF  A  GREAT  MAN       33 

exhibits  the  clamorous  dramas  of  politics  and 
war,  but  because  its  scenes  and  passions  are 
especially  confusing  to  our  judgment  of  the 
actors  thereon.  The  critical  attitude  is  more 
needful  in  this  than  in  any  other  theatre  where 
great  parts  are  played.  In  other  high  employ- 
ments of  genius,  the  awards  of  honor  that 
come  at  last  from  the  imperial  court  of  public 
opinion  go  naturally,  almost  always,  to  repu- 
tations which  fulfill  the  conditions  I  have 
named.  The  acknowledged  great  poets  are 
the  poets  who  have  exercised  a  surpassing 
idealism  of  mind  upon  subjects  that  are  fully 
worthy  of  their  powers,  and  to  ends  that  make 
the  most  of  their  gifts.  The  conception  of 
greatness  in  a  poet  whose  themes  are  mean 
or  trivial,  and  whose  verse  is  empty  of  lofty 
thought,  is  a  conception  that  our  minds  re- 
fuse and  will  not  form.  It  is  so  in  all  realms 
of  Art.  The  vaunted  "  art  for  art's  sake,"  — 
art  for  the  technique  of  it,  —  art  for  the  mere 
cunning  of  eye  and  hand,  —  was  never  and 
will  never  be  great  art.  The  painters  of  pig- 
sties for  scenery  and  dames  of  fashion  for 
human  portraiture  are  craftsmen,  whose  imita- 
tive cunning  is  never  thought  to  be  measur- 
able against  the  penetrating,  idealizing,  dis- 


34    A   STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

covering  art  which  finds  madonnas  among 
women  and  glimpses  of  Eden  or  Olympus  in 
the  landscapes  of  the  world.  It  is  only  on 
those  eminences  of  public  fame  which  over- 
top the  battlefields  of  politics  and  war  that 
the  noble  and  the  ignoble  climbers  seem  so 
often  to  be  confused  indistinguishably  and  ad- 
mired alike.  Such  confusion  is  illustrated  most 
strikingly  in  the  bewildered  homage  of  admi- 
ration which  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  the  most 
extraordinary  of  all  military  and  poHtical  ad- 
venturers, has  received  and  is  receiving  from 
the  world  at  large. 


n 

NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY,  WITH- 
OUT GREATNESS 


n 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY,  WITHOUT 
GREATNESS 

If  the  value  of  great  men  to  their  fellows 
ended  with  the  ending  of  their  work,  there 
might  be  nothing  but  a  question  of  justice  to 
their  memories  in  our  estimates  of  those  who 
are  dead.  But  death  does  not  finish  their  ser- 
vice or  time  extinguish  their  worth  to  man- 
kind. Even  though  nothing  may  remain  of 
what  such  a  man  did,  —  no  visible  fragment 
of  product  from  his  labors  that  has  not  been 
consumed  or  outworn  in  the  changes  of  the 
world,  —  there  is,  or  there  ought  to  be,  an  im- 
perishable survival  of  living  influences  from 
the  man  himself.  If  he  is  not  in  some  way 
an  inspiration  to  us  —  in  some  way  a  potent 
exemplar  of  wisdom,  or  noble  purpose  and 
power ;  if  he  does  not  set  before  us  a  stand- 
ard of  character  that  we  contemplate  with 
reverence,  with  aspiration,  with  an  exaltation 
of  our  faith  in  human  kind ;  if  we  cannot  take 
lessons  from  his  life  that  will  righteously  en- 
ergize our  own, — then,  surely,  there  is  either 


38    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

some  pitiful  mistake  in  the  supposition  of  his 
greatness,  or  else  we  do  not  know  him  for 
what  he  was.  Such  mistakes  are  made  easily 
and  often,  and  because  they  arise  from  con- 
fusions that  obscure  our  perception  and  appre- 
hension of  the  really  great  in  human  character, 
I  am  contending  for  the  recognition  of  a  few 
principles  of  judgment  that  may  guide  us  to 
truer  estimates  of  notable  men. 

Those  principles  of  judgment  have  been 
suggested  in  the  preceding  chapter.  There 
will  now  be  an  attempt  to  apply  them,  in  a 
concrete  way,  to  a  few  important  characters 
and  careers.  Napoleon  Bonaparte  has  been 
chosen  for  the  first  subject  of  examination, 
because  the  standing  of  no  other  exalted  per- 
sonage in  history  seems  quite  so  questionable 
as  his.  There  was  never  another  more  con- 
spicuously a  prodigy  of  his  kind ;  never  an- 
other whose  power  to  master  and  mould  events 
in  his  day  was  more  amazing ;  never  another 
less  entitled  to  be  called  a  great  man,  if  there 
is  truth  in  the  conception  of  greatness  which 
I  have  set  forth. 

Let  us  realize,  to  begin  with,  the  historical 
impressiveness  of  this  man,  by  a  rapid  review 
of  his  wonderful  career :  — 


NAPOLEON:   A  PRODIGY  39 

In  race  he  was  Italian,  not  French.  The 
rfubjugation  of  his  native  island,  Corsica,  to 
France,  had  just  been  accomplished 
when  Napoleon  was  born,  in  1769.  tie  Young 
That  timely  escape  of  the  young 
Corsican  from  Genoese  to  French  citizenship 
carried  him  to  a  French  mihtary  school  for  his 
education,  placed  him  in  the  French  army, 
and  threw  open  before  him,  by  the  instant 
outbreak  of  the  French  revolution,  such  gates 
of  opportunity  as  were  never  unlocked  before 
for  a  genius  and  an  ambition  like  his.  At 
twenty-four,  in  the  year  1793,  he  was  making 
his  mark  as  a  soldier  and  drawing  attention 
to  himself  by  his  handling  of  artillery  at  the 
siege  which  drove  the  British  from  Toulon 
and  ended  royalist  resistance  in  southern 
France.  In  two  years  more  he  had  gained  a 
reputation  which  made  him  the  champion 
chosen  by  the  government  of  the  Directory 
to  crush  an  alarming  Parisian  revolt.  By  that 
service  to  the  men  in  power  he  earned  com- 
mand of  the  army  in  Italy,  and  entered  the 
field  of  his  first  astonishing  campaign,  which 
humbled  Austria,  tore  large  provinces  from 
her  empire,  broke  the  hostile  coalition  of  Eu- 
ropean powers,  and  left  England  alone  in  re- 


40    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN   MEN 

sistance  to  the  aggressions  of  revolutionary 
France. 

It  was  then  that  the  overbearing  audacity 
of  the  man  began  to  be  displayed.  Making 
the  most  of  his  own  prestige  and  the  weakness 
of  the  corrupt  Directory,  he  assumed  practical 
independence  of  action,  exercising  a  free  hand 
in  dealing  with  his  conquests,  and  roughly  re- 
constructing the  northern  and  central  states 
of  the  peninsula  to  suit  schemes  of  his  own. 
He  put  on  the  airs  of  a  potentate,  hardly  veil- 
ing his  arrogant  dictation  of  measures  to  the 
Directory  in  France.  Count  Miot  de  Melito, 
of  the  French  diplomatic  service  in  Italy,  went 
to  confer  with  the  victorious  general  at  the 
headquarters  of  the  army  near  Milan,  in  the 
summer  of  1797,  and  his  memoirs  *  describe 
the  haughty  and  imposing  state  with  which 
the  young  soldier  had  so  promptly  surrounded 
himself.  "  I  was  received  by  Bonaparte,"  he 
says, "  at  the  magnificent  residence  of  Monte- 
bello,  in  the  midst  of  a  brilKant  court,  rather 
than  the  headquarters  of  an  army.  Strict 
etiquette  already  reigned  around  him ;  his 
aides-de-camp  and  his  officers  were  no  longer 

*  Memoirs  of  Count  Miot  de  Melito,  tr.  by  Mrs.  C.  Hoef 
and  J.  Lillie.  New  York :  Charles  Scribner's  Sons.   1881. 


NAPOLEON:   A  PRODIGY  41 

received  at  his  table,  and  he  had  become  fas- 
tidious in  the  choice  of  the  guests  whom  he 
admitted  to  it.  .  .  .  He  dined,  so  to  speak,  in 
public;  the  inhabitants  of  the  country  were 
admitted  to  the  room  in  which  he  was  eating, 
and  allowed  to  gaze  at  him  with  a  keen  curi- 
osity. He  was  in  nowise  embarrassed  or  con- 
fused by  these  excessive  honors,  but  received 
them  as  though  he  had  been  accustomed  to 
them  all  his  life.  .  .  .  All  bowed  before  the 
glory  of  his  victories  and  the  haughtiness  of 
his  demeanor.  He  was  no  longer  the  general 
of  a  triumphant  republic,  but  a  conqueror  on 
his  own  account,  imposing  his  laws  on  the 
vanquished." 

Bonaparte  conversed  freely  with  the  count 
during  the  latter's  visit,  giving  very  open  ex- 
pression to  his  contempt,  not  only  for  the  men 
of  the  Directory,  but  for  the  French  republic, 
and  for  the  French  people  at  large.  "Do  you 
imagine,"  said  he,  "  that  I  triumph  in  Italy 
in  order  to  aggrandize  the  pack  of  lawyers 
who  form  the  Directory,  and  men  like  Carnot 
and  Barras?  What  an  idea!  A  republic  of 
thirty  million  men  !  And  with  our  manners, 
our  vices  !  How  is  it  possible  ?  That  is  a  fancy 
of  which  the  French  are  full  at  present,  but 


42    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

it  will  pass  away  like  all  the  others.  What 
fchey  want  is  glory  and  gratified  vanity ;  but 
as  for  liberty,  they  do  not  understand  what  it 
means.  Look  at  the  army  !  The  victories  we 
have  just  won  have  restored  the  French  soldier 
to  his  true  character.  To  him  I  am  everything. 
Let  the  Directory  try  to  take  the  command 
from  me,  and  they  will  see  who  is  master.  The 
nation  must  have  a  chief,  and  a  chief  rendered 
illustrious  by  glory,  not  by  theories  of  govern- 
ment, by  phrases,  by  theoretic  speeches,  which 
Frenchmen  do  not  understand.  Give  them 
baubles  —  that  suffices  them ;  they  will  be 
amused  and  will  let  themselves  be  led,  so  long 
as  the  end  toward  which  they  are  going  is 
skillfully  hidden  from  them." 

Proceeding  to  discuss  the  then  pending 
negotiations  for  peace  with  Austria,  he  said : 
''  Peace  is  not  to  my  interest.  You  see  what  I 
am,  and  what  I  can  now  do  in  Italy.  If  peace  is 
made,  if  I  am  no  longer  at  the  head  of  the 
army,  which  is  attached  to  me,  I  must  renounce 
the  power,  the  high  position  I  have  made  for 
myself,  in  order  to  pay  court  to  a  pack  of 
lawyers  at  the  Luxembourg.  I  do  not  want  to 
leave  Italy  unless  it  be  to  play  a  part  in  France 
similar  to  my  part  here,  and  the  time  has  not  yet 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  43 

come;  the  pear  is  not  ripe.  ...  I  am  quite 
ready  to  weaken  the  republican  party ;  some 
day  I  shall  do  it  for  my  own  advantage,  not 
that  of  the  former  dynasty.  In  the  mean  time 
I  must  act  with  the  republican  party.  And 
then  if  peace  be  necessary  in  order  to  satisfy 
our  Paris  boobies,  and  if  it  has  to  be  made,  it 
is  my  task  to  make  it." 

So  early  (in  his  twenty  -  eighth  year)  was 
the  young  Corsican  despising  his  fellow  men 
in  general  and  Frenchmen  in  particular,  and 
so  distinctly  were  his  plans  of  ambition  and 
his  arrogant  methods  in  pursuing  them  already 
determined  in  his  mind.  Four  months  later 
he  made  peace  with  Austria,  by  the  treaty 
of  Campo  Formio,  substantially  dictating  the 
terms.  He  judged  the  Parisian  pear  to  be  not 
yet  ripe  for  him,  and  he  w^ould  watch  it  a  little 
longer  before  reaching  to  pluck  it ;  but  his  in- 
fluence was  already  the  most  commanding  in 
France,  and  he  could  plan  his  next  military 
employment.  He  chose  to  lead  an  expedition 
for  the  conquest  and  occupation  of  Egypt, 
lookino;  forward  to  movements  from  that  con- 
venient  foothold  against  the  English  in  India, 
and  with  other  ideas  of  a  more  private  ambr 
tion,  as  we  shall  see.  Egypt  was  subjugated; 


44    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

but  Lord  Nelson  stripped  all  possible  fruits 
from  that  success  by  his  victory  in  the  Battle 
of  the  Nile,  which  destroyed  the  French  fleet, 
gave  England  full  control  of  the  Mediterra- 
nean, and  cut  Napoleon  and  his  army  off  from 
France.  Nevertheless  the  indomitable  Corsican 
was  able,  by  false  bulletins  and  reports,  to  ob- 
scure his  failure  so  far  that,  when,  in  the  au- 
tumn of  1799,  he  made  his  own  escape  from 
the  trap  in  which  his  army  was  left,  he  could 
reappear  in  France  with  a  prestige  not  greatly 
impaired. 

Meantime  a  new  coalition  against  the  re- 
public had  been  formed  in  Europe,  and  the 
French  armies  had  suffered  serious  defeats  in 
Italy  and  on  the  Rhine.  It  had  come  to  be  in- 
evitable that  the  rotten  and  incapable  govern- 
ment of  the  Directory  would  be  overthrown  by 
some  movement  which  some  strong  hand  could 
concentrate  and  control,  and  the  opportune  ar- 
rival of  Bonaparte  brought  the  needed  hand. 
Within  a  month  his  supporters  had  organized 
and  executed  the  coup  d'etat  which  placed 
him  at  the  head  of  the  government,  with  the 
title  of  First  Consul,  under  a  constitution 
which  put  little  of  practical  restraint  on  his 
arbitrary  exercise  of  power.  His  two  colleagues 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  45 

in  the  consulate,  and  the  bodies  behind  him 
which  seemed  to  have  legislative  functions  and 
a  representative  character,  were  mere  features 
of  stage  scenery,  arranged  to  give  a  republi- 
can appearance  to  what  was,  in  reality,  a  re- 
stored monarchy  with  restored  absolutism  in 
France. 

For  a  time  there  were  good  results.  The  ex- 
ecutive ability  of  the  First  Consul  was  very 
great,  and  the  free  hand  with  which  he  worked 
enabled  him  to  produce  quick  and  astonishing 
changes,  from  chaotic  to  systematic  and  or- 
derly conditions,  and  from  depression  to  activ- 
ity in  industry  and  trade.  At  the  same  time 
he  was  giving  fresh  triumphs  to  the  French 
arms  and  intoxicating  the  nation  anew  with 
military  pride.  Once  more  he  was  master  of 
Italy,  and  refashioned  its  states  to  his  lik- 
ing ;  again  he  smote  Austria  to  the  earth  and 
broke  the  coalition  of  European  powers;  and 
now  he  began  to  deal  with  Germany  as  with 
Italy,  dictating  political  reconstructions  and  re- 
arrangements of  its  numerous  states.  France, 
satisfied  with  the  strong  government  which 
had  rescued  it  from  the  anarchy  of  revolution, 
and  glorying  in  the  genius  and  power  of  its 
chief,  was  submissive  to  him  willingly  in  these 


46    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

early  years  of  his  rule.  It  gave  him  the  First 
Consulate  for  life  in  1802,  and  allowed  him 
to  adorn  himself  with  imperial  and  royal 
crowns  and  titles  in  1804  and  1805,  objecting 
very  little,  so  far  as  can  be  seen. 

It  appears  to  be  plain  that  a  very  slight 
curb  of  reasonable  moderation  put  then  upon 
Els  at-  his  ambition  would  have  made  Napo- 
Autocracy  l^on's  imperial  throne  secure  to  the 
In  Europe.    ^^^  ^f  ^g  d^ys.  Europe  would  have 

acquiesced  in  his  empire  if  he  had  been  will- 
ing to  keep  it  within  even  the  widest  boun- 
daries of  historical  France.  But  nothing  less 
than  the  dominion  of  the  world  could  have 
satisfied  his  demoniacal  lust  of  power;  and 
that  lust  was  stimulated  by  an  inappeasable 
hatred  of  England  that  took  possession  of 
his  mind.  Her  sea-power  defied  him.  It  had 
ruined  his  projects  in  Egypt.  It  upheld  her 
against  him  when  all  other  resistance  was 
beaten  down.  It  protected  the  commerce  which 
poured  wealth  into  her  coffers,  and  it  would 
enable  her,  again  and  again,  to  form  alliances 
against  him  by  subsidies  and  loans.  He  could 
not  match  it.  He  could  not  break  through 
it  with  his  invincible  armies,  to  reach  her  island 
shores.  He  had  talked  and  planned  and  seemed 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  47 

to  prepare  for  a  great  expedition  across  the 
Channel;  but  he  cannot  have  believed  that 
he  would  dare  the  risk.  This  powerlessness  to 
strike  straightly  at  the  enemy  which  stood 
most  resolutely  in  his  path  was  hardly  less 
than  maddening  to  so  arrogant  a  temper  as 
his.  It  impassioned  his  natural  craving  for 
power,  concentrating  it  on  one  supreme  prac- 
tical object,  —  to  ruin  England  by  control- 
ling the  larger  sources  of  her  wealth.  He  per- 
suaded himself  that  all  Europe  could  be  forced 
into  such  submission  to  his  purpose  and  such 
obedience  to  his  orders  that  its  markets  might 
be  closed  to  British  goods,  and  that  British 
industries  might  thereby  be  starved.  In  his 
obstinate  pursuit  of  this  design  he  lost  clear- 
ness of  judgment,  and  plunged  blindly  into 
some,  at  least,  of  the  undertakings  which 
wrecked  his  career. 

Nevertheless,  for  seven  years  after  taking 
his  crowns  and  erecting  his  thrones  in  France 
and  Italy  he  could  believe  in  the  superhuman- 
ity  and  invincibility  of  himself.  Through  that 
period  nothing  failed  in  what  he  undertook, 
excepting  when  he  ventured  to  combine  the 
navies  of  France  and  Spain  against  Nel- 
son's fleet,  and  lost  them  at  Trafalgar.   He 


48    A  STUDY   OP  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

made  and  unmade  kingdoms  at  pleasure,  in 
Italy,  Holland,  Germany,  and  Spain;  seized 
the  papal  states  and  annexed  them  to  France ; 
dragged  the  Pope  from  Rome  and  held  him 
in  ignominious  imprisonment  for  five  years; 
surrounded  himself  in  his  family  with  kings 
and  queens;  distributed  principalities  and 
duchies  among  his  chief  officers  and  ministers 
with  a  lavish  hand;  and  shattered  every  com- 
bination that  opposed  itself  to  the  widespread 
despotism  he  was  building  up.  Austria,  for 
a  third  and  a  fourth  time,  fought  him  and  was 
crushed,  at  Ulm  and  Austerlitz  in  1805,  at 
Wagram  in  1809.  Prussia,  first  cheated  and 
humiliated  as  an  unwilling  ally,  was  then 
struck  to  the  very  dust,  in  absolute  subjuga- 
tion, by  double  overthrow,  at  Jena  and  Auer- 
stadt,  on  the  same  day.  Russia,  intervening, 
was  broken  in  courage  by  a  great  defeat  at 
Friedland,  and  her  Tzar,  partly  cowed  and 
partly  bribed,  became  a  helper  in  the  Na- 
poleonic "boycotting"  of  British  goods. 

So  far  in  the  career  of  Napoleon  his  expe- 
rience had  been  with  the  baser  much  more 
than  with  the  better  part  of  mankind.  In 
France  the  weak  and  the  cowardly  had  bent 
before  him,  the  servile  had  fawned  upon  him, 


NAPOLEON  :  A  PRODIGY  49 

the  unscrupulous  in  ambition  and  in  merce- 
nary greed  had  swarmed  about  him,  clutching 
at  his  skirts,  to  be  lifted  by  him  as  he  climbed 
the  heights  of  opportunity  and  power.  It  is 
true  that  no  small  number  of  the  truest  and 
best  in  France  assisted  his  rise,  supported  his 
government,  even  into  its  despotic  stage,  and 
served  it  with  honest  patriotism,  because  it 
restored  to  their  country  the  conditions  of 
authority  and  order  which  they  deemed  its 
greatest  need ;  but  it  is  no  less  true  that  the 
kind  of  government  which  Napoleon  wished 
to  exercise  had  to  take  its  chief  instruments 
and  most  numerous  servitors  from  men  of 
the  baser  order  of  brain,  like  Talleyrand  and 
Fouche.  At  home,  that  was  the  kind  of  soci- 
ety, in  his  closer  surroundings,  with  which 
he  had  most  to  do.  Outside  of  France,  his 
dealings,  to  the  greatest  extent,  had  been  with 
as  despicable  a  lot  of  sordid  rulers  and  brain- 
less bureaucrats  as  ever  afflicted  the  European 
states.  In  Germany,  especially,  he  found 
kings  and  princes  as  ready  to  be  his  puppets, 
as  eager  to  be  bribed  with  new  titles  or  new 
territory,  as  empty  of  any  patriotism,  as  igno- 
rant of  honorable  motives,  as  the  meanest  of  his 
servants  at  home.    If  he  had  not  been  natu- 


50    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN   MEN 

rally  contemptuous  of  mankind  he  must  have 
learned  to  be  so,  from  the  manifestations  that 
were  plainest  in  his  sight. 

But  now  Europe  was  turning  toward  him 
another  front  of  character  which  he  had  not 
The  Revolt  kuowu,  and  which  he  would  never 
oj  Europe,  comprehend.  At  last  he  had  stirred 
those  slow  masses  of  people  which  give  na- 
tions their  ponderable  substance,  and  which 
nothing  can  resist  when  they  move.  The  flun- 
kies and  hirelings  and  puppets  with  whom  he 
had  had  most  of  his  foreign  dealings  hitherto 
were  being  pushed  aside,  and  he  now  faced  men 
and  motives  of  a  very  different  stamp. 

On  the  surface  of  things,  in  the  spring  of 
1811,  the  all-conquering  Corsican  appeared 
to  be  approaching  the  substantial  autocracy 
in  Europe  to  which  he  aspired.  The  humbled 
house  of  Austria  had  given  him  one  of  its 
daughters  in  marriage,  to  succeed  his  divorced 
wife,  Josephine,  and  when,  on  the  20th  of 
March,  1811,  a  son  and  heir  was  born  to  him, 
he  exclaimed:  "Now  begins  the  finest  epoch 
of  my  reign."  There  was  never  a  self-delusion 
more  infatuate  and  blind.  The  knell  of  doom 
to  his  false  fabric  of  military  power,  and  to  all 
of  his  selfish  projects,  was  beginning  in  that 


NAPOLEON  :  A  PRODIGY  61 

very  hour  to  ring  loud,  and  he  heard  it  not. 
Forces  of  outraged  national  feeling  which 
nothing  in  his  nature  could  understand  were 
undermining  him  in  Spain  and  Germany,  and 
the  crust  of  despotism  that  covered  them  was 
at  the  breaking  point,  but  he  knew  it  not. 

On  that  day  of  March,  1811,  when  betook 
his  newborn  son  into  his  arms  and  exulted  in 
the  ffift  of  a  successor  to  his  crowns, 

o  ^  ,  .  The  Crnm- 

his  forces  in  the  Spanish  peninsula  bUngoiMs 
were  recoiling  from  Wellington's 
impregnable  lines  at  Torres  Vedras,  begin- 
ning retreats  that  would  seldom  halt  till 
Wellington  followed  them  into  France ;  Ger- 
many, beaten,  trampled  upon,  insulted  by 
him,  but  steeled  to  heroism  and  disciplined  to 
wisdom  by  the  anguish  of  her  subjugation, 
was  undergoing  a  rapid  unseen  evolution  of 
her  real  racial  strength ;  and  Russia,  sickened 
of  her  profitless  partnership  with  Napoleon  in 
his  abortive  "continental  system,"  was  encour- 
aging secret  plans  for  a  fresh  rising  of  the  na- 
tions ao^ainst  the  insolent  warrior  who  abused 
or  threatened  them  all.  He  scorned  the  abun- 
dant warnings  that  came  to  him  from  his 
agents  everywhere,  who  realized,  as  he  did 
not,  the  serious  menace  of  these  underburning 


52    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

fires.  He  thought  that  he  had  attained  invin- 
cibility, and  nothing  could  shake  that  belief. 
As  he  looked  at  the  situation,  Russia  was  the 
one  remaining  power  on  the  continent  that 
he  needed  to  break,  as  he  had  broken  Austria 
and  Prussia,  and  he  entertained  no  doubt  of 
his  ability  to  lay  the  Muscovite  empire  at  his 
feet.  And  so  he  exhausted  France  by  his  stu- 
pendous preparations  for  that  invasion  of  Rus- 
sia, in  1812,  which  ended  in  the  most  horrible 
of  all  the  military  catastrophes  that  are  told  of 
in  the  history  of  the  world. 

Then,  in  the  next  year,  came  the  mighty 
uprising  of  Germany,  supported  by  Russia, 
Austria  and  Great  Britain,  and  he  had  to 
face  it  with  armies  filled  .out  by  boys  under 
twenty  years  of  age,  to  the  extent  of  150,000 
in  the  conscription  of  that  year.  So  fright- 
fully had  the  grown  manhood  of  France 
been  destroyed  in  his  wars!  He  had  so  con- 
sumed the  vast  hosts  of  his  trained  veterans 
that,  even  though  his  resistless  will  and  en- 
ergy could  drag  well  nigh  half  a  million  of 
armed  men  to  the  field  once  more,  he  could 
not  make  them  into  such  forces  as  he  had 
wielded  in  the  past.  He  had  some  successes  at 
the  outset  of  the  struggle  with  his  oncoming 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  63 

fate,  winning  the  last  of  his  shining  victories 
at  Dresden ;  and  then  all  went  disastrously  to 
the  end. 

After  the  decisive  great  "  battle  of  the  na- 
tions/* fought  round  Leipsic,  in  October,  Na- 
poleon cast  reproaches  upon  Marshal  Auge- 
reau,  saying  that  he  was  not  the  Augereau  of 
Castiglione,  thus  referring  to  a  battle  of  1796, 
in  Italy,  where  the  marshal  had  most  distin- 
guished himself,  and  from  which  he  had 
received  a  ducal  title.  "Ah,"  retorted  the  vet- 
eran, "  give  me  back  the  old  soldiers  of  Italy 
and  I  will  show  you  that  I  am."  That  reply 
was  descriptive  in  part,  but  not  wholly,  of 
the  day  of  retribution  to  which  Napoleon 
had  come.  He  had  spent  the  lives  of  the  gen- 
eration of  men  who  won  his  victories  for  him ; 
but,  likewise,  he  had  spent  the  best  of  his 
own  powers.  All  military  critics  of  his  cam- 
paigns have  seen  signs,  from  this  time,  of 
a  weakened  grip  in  his  handling  of  the 
awful  forces  of  war.  It  was  mighty,  still; 
amazing  in  the  last  tremendous  efforts  of  his 
resistance  to  the  approaching  fate,  when  the 
allies  had  driven  him  back  to  France,  and 
from  the  frontier  toward  Paris,  and  the  circle 
of  their  armies  closed  round  him;  but  his 


54    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

electric  perceptions,  his  inlighted  vision  of  the 
field,  his  instincts  o£  infallible  quick  judg- 
ment, were  not  as  of  old. 

And  more  fatal  to  him  than  that  fading  of 
his  genius  was  the  monstrous  inflation  and 
arrogation  of  his  will.  He  had  fed  it,  exercised 
it,  cultivated  it,  till  it  overlorded  all  the  fac- 
ulties of  his  mind.  It  would  not  let  him  see 
the  facts  of  his  adversity  as  they  were ;  and 
so,  of  all  people  concerned,  he  was  the  last 
to  comprehend  the  situation  to  which  he  had 
come.  Even  after  Leipsic  he  was  offered  the 
keeping  of  his  throne  in  France,  with  the 
natural  boundaries  of  the  Alps,  the  Pyrenees, 
and  the  Rhine  for  his  kingdom,  if  he  would 
let  the  rest  of  Europe  alone ;  and  even  while 
he  defended  Paris,  in  the  battles  of  the  last 
weeks  of  his  reign,  he  might  have  kept  the 
sovereignty  of  France  as  it  was  in  1791,  before 
the  wars  of  the  Revolution  broke  out ;  but  he 
would  not  give  up  his  kingdom  of  Italy,  nor 
agree  to  restore  Holland  to  freedom.  The 
demoniac  despotism  of  his  self-will  drove  him 
on  to  the  inevitable  end  of  his  bloody  career, 
dragging  thousands  of  the  very  schoolboys  of 
France  to  untimely  death  as  heartlessly  as  he 
had  dragged  thi3ir  fathers  before. 


NAPOLEON  :  A  PRODIGY  55 

What  an  unparalleled  career  it  is !  What  a 
prodigy  of  awful  and  appalling  powers  it  dis- 
closes in  the  man  !  But  what  kind  of  powers  ? 
From  what  factors  in  the  human  make  up  ? 
How  much  from  the  higher  and  how  much 
from  the  lower  ?  How  much  from  soul  and 
mind,  and  how  much  from  the  animal  nature 
that  goes  with  them  in  man  ?  How  much  of 
the  kind  of  force  that  makes  the  lion  the  king 
of  beasts,  and  how  much  of  the  attributes  that 
put  man  above  the  beasts  ?  These  are  not  idle 
questions  in  the  case  of  so  exceptional  a  man. 

Of  the  surpassing  quality  of  Napoleon's  in- 
tellect, in  some  modes  of  power,  there  is  no 
question,  of  course.  All  that  goes  to  TheQuauty 
the  making  of  a  mighty  war-lord  was  J^c^^^'^" 
concentrated  in  him  to  a  degree  and  Po^e»- 
a  perfection  that,  possibly,  has  never  been 
equaled  in  another  man.  But  that  intellectual 
equipment  for  the  commanding  of  belligerent 
multitudes  and  the  conduct  of  war  is  surely  not 
the  highest  and  greatest  with  which  a  human 
being  can  be  endowed.  Napoleon  himself  has 
described  the  kind  of  mental  power  that  he 
found  in  his  own  experience  to  be  called  mostly 
into  play.  In  one  of  the  conversations  at  St. 
Helena  reported  by  Las  Cases  he  said:  '^The 


56    A  STUDY   OF   GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

fate  of  a  battle  is  the  result  of  a  moment, — of  a 
thoiio'ht ;  the  hostile  forces  advance  with  various 
combinations  ;  they  attack  each  other  and  fight 
for  a  certain  time ;  the  critical  moment  arrives, 
—  a  mental  flash  decides,  and  the  least  re- 
serve [of  troops]  accomplishes  the  object."  At 
another  time  he  said  to  the  same  listener : 
"Success  in  war  depends  so  much  on  quick- 
sightedness,  and  on  seizing  the  right  moment, 
that  the  battle  of  Austerlitz,  which  was  so  com- 
pletely won,  would  have  been  lost  if  I  had  at- 
tacked six  hours  sooner."  * 

This  electric  quality  of  mind  —  the  power 
to  see,  to  put  together  and  to  apprehend  as 
by  a  flash  the  factors  of  circumstance  in  any 
problem  of  the  moment,  in  war  or  in  politics 
— is  what  seems  to  have  been  really  extraor- 
dinary in  the  endowments  of  Napoleon  on  their 
intellectual  side.  With  it,  on  the  under  side 
of  his  nature,  was  an  almost  superhuman  de- 
velopment of  energy  and  will,  and  the  casual 
combination  produced  all  that  was  exceptional 
and  extraordinary  in  the  powers  of  the  man. 
They  were  the  powers  of  a  great  conqueror 
and  a  great  despot, —  not  the  powers  of  a  great 

*  LifSf  Exile  and  Conversations  of  the  Emperor  Napoleon* 
I,  pt.  2,  pp.  6  and  143.  London  :  H.  Colburn.    1835. 


NAPOLEON :  A  PRODIGY  57 

statesman  or  of  a  great  man.  In  what  he  did 
there  is  no  sign  of  any  wide  sweep  of  vision, 
— any  far-reaching  forecast  of  circumstances 
and  projection  of  thought,  —  any  singular  sa- 
gacity, even  in  the  projects  of  his  selfish  am- 
bition. Tested  by  the  results  of  his  ambitious 
undertakings,  they  were  unwisely  conceived 
and  ill -harmonized  with  each  other,  repre- 
senting no  well  pondered  aim  or  design.  Sep- 
arately, they  astound  us  by  the  energy  and 
the  matchless  ability  with  which  he  carried 
them  out;  but  survey  them  together,  and  what 
is  there  to  marvel  at  or  to  admire  ?  What  but 
the  ashes  of  a  stupendous  failure  have  they 
left  in  the  history  of  the  world  ?  We  are  con- 
templating a  career  of  successes,  in  a  wonder- 
ful series,  but  not  a  career  of  success,  as  the 
grand  product  of  a  life. 

Nevertheless,  after  all  his  intellectual  limi- 
tations have  been  reckoned  up.  Napoleon  is 
still  a  prodigy  of  genius,  and  would  claim  a 
place  among  the  great  of  history  if  his  moral 
nature  had  not  been  so  hideously  dwarfed  and 
deformed.  It  is  there  that  he  shrinks  to  a  lit- 
tleness and  meanness  which  no  splendor  of  ma- 
levolent genius  can  redeem ;  and  there,  in  that 
aspect,  we  must  study  the  man. 


68    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

In  this  study  it  is  assumed  that,  where  sur- 
passing gifts  of  any  nature  are  bestowed  on  a 
„^  ^        man,  the  mark  and  test  and  measure 

THe  Man  ' 

tested  toy      of  ffreatness  in  him  must  lie  in  the 

hlsAspira-  .  .  •  i       i  •  i  t 

tions  in  motives  and  purposes  with  which  and 
for  which  they  are  employed  in  the 
work  of  his  life.  We  can  apply  this  mark  and 
test  to  Napoleon,  not  by  any  guessing  of  mo- 
tives in  what  he  did,  but  mostly  by  disclosures 
from  himself.  There  is  no  mistaking,  for 
example,  the  significance  of  his  own  ideals  of 
greatness  and  a  great  career,  which  he  disclosed 
many  times,  in  conversations  that  have  been 
reported  by  people  who  lived  in  intimate  asso- 
ciation with  him.  They  were  pagan,  oriental, 
barbaric  ideals,  wholly  alien  to  the  spirit  of 
civilization  in  our  modern  world.  On  the  day 
of  his  coronation  as  emperor  he  said  to  De- 
cres,  his  minister  of  the  navy:  "My  record 
has  been  brilliant,  I  acknowledge,  and  I  have 
had  an  excellent  career.  But  how  different 
from  ancient  times !  Take  Alexander,  for  in- 
stance. After  having  conquered  Asia  he  an- 
nounced himself  to  the  people  to  be  a  son  of 
Jupiter,  and,  with  the  exception  of  .  .  .  Aris- 
totle and  a  few  Athenian  pedants,  he  was  be- 
lieved by  the  entire  Orient.  ...  If  I  were  to 


NAPOLEON:   A  PRODIGY  59 

announce  myself  to-day  to  be  the  son  of  the 
Everlasting  Father, — if  I  were  to  declare  that 
I  was  going  to  return  thanks  to  Him  by  vir- 
tue of  that  fact, — there  isn't  a  fish- wife  who 
would  not  jeer  at  me  as  I  passed.  The  people 
are  far  too  much  enlightened;  there  is  no- 
thing great  left  to  be  done."  *  Nothiiig  great 
left  to  he  done,  with  the  power  of  the  imperial 
sceptre  which  he  took  into  his  hands  that  day, 
because  he  could  not  practice,  in  a  too-enlight- 
ened age,  the  imposture  of  self -deification,  as 
Alexander  had  done ! 

The  same  thought  had  been  in  Napoleon's 
mind  seven  years  before,  when  he  said  to 
Bourrienne,  his  secretary :  "  Europe  is  nothing 
but  a  mole-hill;  it  is  only  in  the  Orient  that 
there  have  been  great  empires  and  mighty 
revolutions,  —  there  where  600,000,000  peo- 
ple live."  2  It  was  the  thought  that  took  him 
to  Egypt,  and  it  filled  his  mind  there  with 
dreams.  In  talk  with  Madame  de  Remusat,  one 
of  the  ladies  of  his  court  while  First  Consul, 
he  said,  in  1803:  "In  Egypt  I  found  myself 
free  from  the  wearisome  restraints  of  civiliza- 

^  Napoleon  the  First.  By  August  Fournier,  p.  410.  New 
York  :  Henry  Holt  &  Co. 
*  Fournier,  p.  122. 


60    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

tion.  I  dreamed  all  sorts  of  things,  and  I  saw 
how  all  that  I  dreamed  might  be  realized.  I 
created  a  religion;  I  pictured  myself  on  the 
road  to  Asia,  mounted  on  an  elephant,  with  a 
turban  on  my  head  and  in  my  hand  a  new 
Koran,  which  I  should  compose  according  to 
my  own  ideas."  ^  He  never  dismissed  such 
dreams ;  his  mind  approved  them  to  the  end. 
During  his  captivity  at  St.  Helena,  in  one  of 
the  conversations  reported  by  General  Gour- 
gaud,  he  said:  "Arabia  awaits  a  man.  Had 
I  taken  Acre  I  should  have  gone  to  India.  I 
should  have  assumed  the  turban  at  Aleppo, 
and  have  headed  an  army  of  200,000  men." 
In  another  of  the  same  talks,  speaking  of 
Alexander's  visit  to  the  temple  of  Ammon, 
when  the  god  was  reported  to  have  recognized 
him  as  a  son,  he  praised  it  as  an  act  of  policy, 
and  remarked:  "So  I,  had  I  remained  in 
Egypt,  should  probably  have  founded  an  em- 
pire like  Alexander,  by  going  on  a  pilgrimage 
to  Mecca." « 

Once  Gourgaud  mentioned  to  him  that  the 

*  Memoirs  of  Madame  de  Remusat,  1802-1808,  tr.  by  Mrs. 
C.  Hoey  and  J.  Lillie,  vol.  i,  p.  149.  New  York:  D.  Apple- 
ton  &  Co.    1880. 

*  Napoleon  :  The  Last  Phase.  By  the  Earl  of  Rosebery,  pp. 
219,  220.    New  York:  Harper  &  Bros. 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  61 

sovereign  in  China  is  worshiped  as  a  god; 
whereupon  he  replied  gravely  that  "  that  is  as 
it  should  be."  *  A  morbid  craving  for  that 
oriental  worship  must  have  been  always  in 
his  mind. 

One  may  read  widely  in  the  correspondence 
of  Napoleon,  and  in  the  many  memoirs  of  him 
left  by  those  who  lived  in  the  closest  inti- 
macy with  him,  and  find  nothing  to  indicate  a 
conception  in  his  mind  of  higher  objects  in 
life  or  nobler  aspirations  than  were  embodied 
in  these  oriental  and  barbaric  dreams.  The 
thought  of  good  service  to  his  country, — of 
being  in  any  way  a  benefactor  to  any  part  of 
mankind, — of  earning  a  grateful  fame,  and 
leaving  a  fragrant  memory  for  affectionate 
preservation  in  the  world,  can  never  have  en- 
tered his  mind  without  moving  it  to  contempt. 
He  had  the  morbid  craving  of  a  Nero  for  the 
kind  of  admiration  that  is  mixed  pungently 
with  awe  and  fear ;  but  if  it  lacked  that  flavor 
it  was  insipid  to  his  taste. 

In  his  own  esteem  he  held  himself  so  far 
above  other  men  that  he  despised  them  all,  and 
cared  for  nothing  that  they  could  give  him 
except  their  obedience,  their  service,  and  the 

1  Rosebery,  p.  168. 


62    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS    IN  MEN 

flattery  of  their  dread.  He  said  to  General 
Gourgaud,at  St.  Helena:  ''  I  only  care  for  peo- 
The Enor-  pie  who  are  usefultcune^andso len gas 
^ems^^'  they  are  usef  uL!^  ^  In  1809,  when  ne- 
Bgotism.  gotiating  peace  with  Austria,  he  said 
to  the  Austrian  ambassador,  Count  Bubna: 
*^A  sovereign  should  not  concern  himself  as 
to  the  opinion  of  his  subjects."  ^  At  Leipsic, 
in  1813,  when  his  course  was  nearly  run,  he 
said  to  Metternich:  "A  man  like  me  cares 
little  for  the  lives  of  a  million  men."  ^  It  is  not 
to  be  doubted  that  he  prided  himself  on  being 
that  kind  of  heartless  man  ;  just  as  he  prided 
himself  on  being  a  man  without  moral  restraint. 
He  would  say,  Madame  de  Remusat  tells  us : 
^'  I  am  not  an  ordinary  man,  and  laws  of  mor- 
als and  of  custom  were  never  made  for  me."  ^ 
It  was  part  of  his  hear tlessn ess  that  he  could 
be  as  cool  in  his  feeling  toward  enemies  as  to- 
ward friends.  Shortly  after  he  became  emperor 
he  boasted  to  Madame  de  Remusat :  "  I  am  not 
capable  of  acting  from  revenge ;  I  only  sweep 
obstacles  from  my  path."  ^  Las  Cases,  his 
most  intimate  companion  at  St.  Helena,  bears 
testimony  to  the  truth  of  this  boast.  "I  have 

»  Rosebery,  p.  51.  ^  Fournier,  p.  481.    '  Foamier,  p.  642. 
*  Rdmusat,  vol.  i,  p.  91.  *  Kdmusat,  vol.  i,  p.  249^ 


NAPOLEON:   A  PRODIGY  63 

never  known  him/'  he  says,  "to  evince  the 
least  feeling  of  animosity  against  those  indi- 
viduals who  have  been  most  to  blame  in  their 
conduct  towards  him.  He  gives  no  great  credit 
to  those  who  distinguished  themselves  by  good 
conduct ;  they  had  only  done  their  duty.  He 
is  not  very  indignant  against  those  who  acted 
basely.  ...  It  is  evident  that  he  would  be  ca- 
pable of  becoming  the  ally  of  his  most  cruel 
enemy,  and  of  living  with  the  man  who  had 
done  him  the  greatest  wrong."  i  Chancellor 
Pasquier,  in  his  memoirs,  is  a  witness  to  the 
same  effect.  "The  First  Consul,"  he  says, 
"never  experienced  any  hatred  or  any  affec- 
tion not  dictated  to  him  by  his  self-interest."  * 
It  is  doubtful  if  another  ever  lived  who 
did  look  at  all  men  so  entirely  with  reference 
to  the  use  to  be  made  of  them  or  the  hostility 
to  be  met  in  them,  and  with  such  passionless 
indifference  otherwise.  He  looked  for  nothing 
else  in  the  people  with  whom  he  dealt.  He  ex- 
pected to  secure  devotion  to  himself  by  mak- 
ing it  advantageous  to  his  devotees,  and  fidel- 
ity appears  to  have  had  no  other  meaning  in 
his  mind.  He  trusted  so  entirely  to  self-inter- 

»  Las  Cases,  vol.  i,  pp.  335,  337. 

2  Memoirs  of  Chancellor  Pasquier,  tr.  by  C.  E.  Roche,  vol. 
i,  p.  160.   New  York :  Charles  Scribner's  Sons.     1893. 


64    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

est  for  the  binding  of  men  to  his  fortunes  that 
he  dared  continually  to  outrage  the  feelings 
of  his  most  important  ministers  by  insult  and 
abuse.  Says  Talleyrand,  who  had  experience  of 
his  insults,  and  who  hated  him  accordingly: 
"Napoleon  delighted  in  annoying,  humiliat- 
ing, tormenting  those  whom  he  had  elevated." ' 
His  own  cynical  coolness  would  make  him  in- 
capable of  understanding  the  feeling  that  such 
treatment  evoked,  and  he  was  equally  incapa- 
ble of  a  restraining  generosity  of  soul. 

Naturally,  it  has  become  a  question  whether 
he  had  a  real  friendship  in  his  life.  Lord 
A  Man  Rosebcry,  in  his  "Last  Phase"  of 
Priendt.  Napolcon,  concludes  positively  that 
"he  had  no  friends"  at  the  end  of  his  career.^ 
"Great  masses,"  says  the  Earl  of  Rosebery, 
"who  knew  him  only  in  his  public  capacity, 
chiefly  as  a  general,  adored  him  to  the  last. 
The  private  soldiers  who  marched  from  France 
to  Waterloo  were  inspired  with  an  enthusiasm 
for  him  which  at  least  equaled  that  of  the  sol- 
diers of  Marengo  and  Austerlitz.  But  that 
enthusiasm  diminished  in  proportion  to  re- 

*  Memoirs  of  the  Prince  de  Talleyrand,  ed.  by  the  Due 
4e  Broglie,  vol.  ii,  p.  13.  New  York  :  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons. 
»  Rosebery,  pp.  273-27& 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  65 

moteness  from  the  rank  and  file.  Officers  felt 
it  less  in  an  ascending  scale,  and  when  the 
summit  was  reached  it  was  no  longer  percepti- 
ble. It  had  long  ceased  to  be  felt  by  those  who 
knew  the  emperor  most  intimately.  Friend- 
ship ...  he  had  deliberately  discarded,  as 
too  close  a  relation  for  other  mortals  to  bear 
to  himself.  Many,  too,  of  his  early  friends 
had  died  on  the  field  of  battle,  friends  such  as 
Lannes,  Desaix,  and  Duroc.  But  some  had 
survived,  and  left  him  without  ceremony,  or 
even  decency.  Berthier,  his  lifelong  comrade, 
the  messmate  of  his  campaigns,  his  confidant, 
deserted  him  without  a  word,  and  did  not 
blush  to  become  captain  of  Louis  XVIII's 
body-guard.  His  marshals,  the  companions 
of  his  victories,  all  left  him  at  Fontainebleau, 
some  with  contumely.  Ney  insulted  him  in 
1814,  Davoust  in  1815.  Marmont,  the  petted 
child  of  his  favor,  conspicuously  betrayed  him. 
Caulaincourt  found  a  limit  to  his  devotion  at 
last.  Even  his  body  attendants,  Constant  and 
Eustan,  the  valet  who  always  attended  him 
and  the  Mameluke  who  slept  against  his  door, 
abandoned  him.  It  was  difficult  to  collect  a 
handful  of  officers  to  accompany  him  to  Elba, 
much  more  difficult  to  find  a  few  for  St.  He- 


66    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

lena.  The  hopeless  followers  of  ungrateful 
masters,  the  chief  mourners  of  misfortune  who 
haunted  the  barren  ante  -  chambers  of  the 
Bourbons  and  the  Stuarts,  had  no  counterpart 
in  the  exile  of  Napoleon.  .  .  .  We  must  re- 
gretfully attribute  this  alienation,  discredit- 
able as  it  is  to  the  deserters,  more  discredit- 
ably to  Napoleon  himself." 

In  saying  that  Napoleon  had  no  friends 
Lord  Rosebery  has  admitted  a  possible  excep- 
tion in  Duroc,  whom  the  emperor  called  his 
conscience,  and  from  whom  he  was  said  to 
have  no  secrets.  But,  on  Duroc's  side,  the 
friendship  is  denied  by  Bourrienne,  who  was 
a  playfellow  and  schoolmate  of  Napoleon  in 
boyhood  and  his  private  secretary  in  later  life, 
and  in  whose  memoirs  we  find  this  significant 
remark :  "  At  St.  Helena  Bonaparte  often  de- 
clared that  he  was  much  attached  to  Duroc. 
I  believe  this  to  be  true ;  but  I  know  that  the 
attachment  was  not  returned."  * 

Bourrienne  himself  was  one  of  many  who 
entered  Napoleon's  service  with  an  enthusi- 
astic admiration  of  the  hero  as  he  shone  in 
the  public  eye,  and  were  disillusioned  by  close 

*  Private  Memoirs  of  Napoleon^  vol.  i,   p.  29.     London  t 
H.  Colburn.    1830. 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  67 

personal  acquaintance  with  the  real  man. 
Baron  Charles  Doris,  who  wrote  "  Secret  Mem- 
oirs of  Napoleon  Bonaparte,"  which  were  pub- 
lished anonymously  in  1815,i  as  being  by 
^^  one  who  never  quitted  him  for  fifteen  years/' 
made  no  concealment  of  the  animosity  of  feel- 
ing with  which  he  wrote,  but  said:  "If  any 
one  has  reason  to  blush  at  having  considered 
this  man  with  adulation,  I  was  guilty  for  the 
space  of  two  years.  During  that  time  I  viewed 
him  only  at  a  distance,  I  judged  only  by  his 
victories,  by  the  reports  of  his  courtiers ;  for 
courtiers,  and  very  dangerous  ones,  he  had  in 
abundance.  Circumstances  on  a  sudden  placed 
me  about  his  person, — the  charm  disappeared. 
This  was  the  work  of  only  a  fortnight."  Else- 
where, the  same  writer  remarks;  "He  [Na- 
poleon] was  never  surrounded  but  by  cour- 
tiers; never  had  he  a  true  friend,  not  even  in 
his  own  family.  Imperious  by  system,  no  one 
could  presume  to  be  in  the  right  in  his  pres- 
ence if  he  would  have  it  otherwise.  .  .  .  The 
people  were  to  him  what  flocks  are  to  the  pro- 
prietors, he  valued  them  for  their  bodies  and 
their  fleeces."  - 

^  London  :  H.  Colbum. 

»  Doris,  Secret  Memoirs ,  pp.  63,  45. 


68     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

The  ideals  of  Napoleon's  ambition  have 
been  characterized  as  barbaric.  So  far  as  he 
A  Bar-        went  in  the  reaKzation  of  those  ideals 

bario 

conaueror.  he  adhered  to  them  exactly,  and  the 
spirit  of  the  European  despotism  he  established 
was  not  European  and  civilized,  but  orien- 
tal and  barbaric  throughout.  In  Italy,  Hol- 
land, Germany,  Spain,  when  he  had  vanquished 
them  by  his  arms,  he  ground  their  unfor- 
tunate people  under  his  feet,  and  terrorized 
them  by  such  methods  as  a  Tartar  conqueror 
would  have  used.  Give  attention  to  a  few 
of  the  orders  that  went  to  his  satraps  and 
generals,  directly  from  himself,  and  in  his  own 
words!  This,  for  example,  to  Holland,  in 
1811:  "Have  the  wife  of  Gallet,  the  pilot 
who  is  in  the  English  service,  arrested,  and 
have  that  sailor  written  to,  that,  unless  he 
comes  back  to  France,  or  proceeds  to  some 
neutral  country,  so  that  we  may  be  sure  he  is 
not  serving  the  English,  she  and  her  children 
will  he  put  in  prison,  into  a  dark  cell,  on 
bread  and  water.  Extend  this  measure  to  the 
wives  and  children  of  all  pilots  in  the  English 
service."  ^     If  you  think  that  order  barbaric, 

^  Nero  Letters  of  Napoleon,  omitted  from  the  edition  pub- 
lished under  the  auspices  of  Napoleon  III ;  tr.  by  Lady  Mary 
Loyd,  p.  219. 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  69 

consider  this,  which  went  to  Holland  the  same 
year:  "My  intention  is  that  the  500  sailors 
who  took  part  in  the  affair  at  Aurich  [where 
some  rioting  had  occurred]  shall  be  arrested 
and  brought  to  France,  to  serve  at  Toulon, 
Brest  and  Lorient;  that  several  shall  be 
brought  before  a  military  court  and  shot; 
that  the  most  guilty  of  those  who  have  fled 
shall  be  sentenced  to  death  by  default,  their 
fathers,  mother s,  wives,  hr others  and  sisters 
imjyrisoned,  their  houses  burned  and  their 
goods  sequestrated."!  Could  Timour  or  Attila 
have  illustrated  the  temper  of  a  barbaric  con- 
queror and  despot  more  perfectly? 

The  orders  sent  personally  by  Napoleon  to 
his  generals  in  Germany,  in  1807  and  1808, 
are  full  of  such  instructions  as  these  :  "  Have 
[Hersfield]  thoroughly  sacked  to  punish  the 
insult  offered  to  the  sixty  men  of  my  troops." 
"  Indicate  the  men  each  town  is  to  give  up  on 
pain  of  being  burnt.  .  .  .  Visible  traces  must 
be  left  to  frighten  the  evil  intentioned  in  Ger- 
many.  It  was  thus,  by  burning  the  big  village 
of  Bignasco  that  I  kept  Italy  quiet  in  the  year 
IV."  "  Require  the  names  of  the  four  chief 
persons  [at  Crossen]  who  have  corresponded 

>  New  Letters^  p.  233. 


70    A  STUDY   OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

with  the  partisans  [of  Prussia] ,  and  you  will 
do  the  same  thing  at  Giintersberg  and  Mes- 
critz.  .  .  .  You  will  have  these  twelve  persons 
shot."  *  In  March,  1813,  at  the  outset  of  the 
German  rising,  he  wrote  to  his  step-son,  Eu- 
gene, then  commanding  the  French  forces  in 
Prussia :  "At  the  least  insult  from  a  town  or 
Prussian  village  burn  it  down,  even  if  it  were 
Berlin."  On  the  7th  of  May  in  the  same 
year  he  wrote :  "  Send  General  Vandamme 
into  Mecklenburg.  .  .  .  He  will  at  once  arrest 
all  subjects  of  the  town  of  Hamburg  who 
have  taken  service  under  the  title  of  '  Senators 
of  Hamburg.'  He  will  bring  them  before  a 
court  martial ;  he  will  have  the  five  worst  cul- 
prits shot,  and  he  will  send  the  rest  under 
strong!  escort  to  France.  .  .  .  He  will  have  the 
officers  of  the  Hanseatic  Legion  shot.  .  .  . 
He  will  draw  up  a  proscription  list  of  500  of 
the  richest  and  most  ill-behaved  persons  be- 
longing to  the  thirty-second  military  divison ; 
he  will  have  them  arrested  and  their  property 
sequestrated.  .  .  .  He  will  mulct  the  towns 
of  Hamburg  and  Lubeck  in  the  sum  of 
50,000,000."^ 

»  New  Letters,  pp.  36,  37,  38. 
'  New  Letters. 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  71 

Even  such  barbarities  of  subjugation  as 
these  had  been  surpassed  in  1806,  when  the 
Nuremberg  bookseller.  Palm,  for  publishing 
a  purely  patriotic  pamphlet,  entitled  "  Ger- 
many in  her  Deep  Humiliation,"  was  seized 
by  Napoleon's  order,  dragged  to  an  Austrian 
town,  then  held  by  invading  French  troops, 
tried  by  a  military  court,  and  shot.  Less  trag^ 
ical,  but  more  in  outrage  of  the  sentiment 
and  spirit  of  civilization,  was  the  insolent 
proscription  and  expulsion  from  Prussia  of 
Baron  von  Stein,  the  ablest  statesman  of  his 
day.  Stein's  wise  measures  of  domestic  reform, 
ending  serfdom,  clearing  away  as  much  as 
possible  of  the  rubbish  of  feudalism,  creating 
municipal  institutions,  abolishing  commercial 
monopolies,  and  broadly  laying  the  founda- 
tions of  the  new  Prussia  that  has  risen  to  lead- 
ership in  Germany  since,  were  feared  and 
resented  by  the  master  of  the  French  garri- 
sons then  quartered  in  Prussian  towns.  A 
decree  launched  from  Madrid  in  December, 
1808,  commanded  that  "  the  man  named 
Stein"  should  be  dealt  with  as  an  enemy  of 
France,  his  property  confiscated  and  his  per- 
son seized  wherever  found.  "Inform  the 
Prussian  court,"  was  Napoleon's  further  order 


72    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

(December  16,  1808),  "  that  my  minister  will 
not  go  to  Berlin  unless  Stein  is  sent  out  of 
that  capital  and  out  of  Prussia.  You  will  go 
further;  you  will  demand  by  letter  to  the 
Prussian  minister  that  this  person  shall  be 
given  up  as  a  traitor.  .  .  .  Let  it  be  under 
stood  that  if  my  troops  lay  hands  on  Stein 
he  will  be  put  to  death."  ^  Pi;ussia  could  not 
protect  her  statesman,  and  Stein  fled,  first  to 
the  Austrian  court,  and  finally  to  Russia,  where 
he  entered  the  service  of  the  Tsar.  In  due 
time  he  returned,  to  become  the  master-spirit 
of  the  rising  which  drove  Napoleon  from 
Germany  and  ended  his  career.  The  Prussia 
which  arose  then  from  the  dust  of  its  humili- 
ation, schooled  and  fitted  for  the  making  of 
the  German  Empire  of  to-day,  was  the  mon- 
umental work  of  a  few  political  architects, 
among  whom  Stein  was  the  chief.  "The  man 
named  Stein"  has  a  monument  that  endures. 
What  has  the  man  named  Napoleon  left,  of 
durable  outcome  from  his  life,  to  compare  with 
that  of  Stein? 

The  tragic  case  of  the  Bourbon  Due  d*En- 
ghien,  kidnapped  from  neutral  territory  in 
1804  and  brought  into  France  to  be  shot, 

»  New  Letters,  p.  111. 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  73 

in  retaliation  for  a  royalist  plot  against  the 
life  of  the  First  Consul,  has  been  staled  by 
much  controversy,  and  is  recalled  in  this  con- 
nection for  the  purpose,  only,  of  citing  Napo- 
leon's own  statement  of  his  motives  in  that 
startling  deed.  He  disclosed  them  in  talk  with 
his  brothers,  and  his  words  were  repeated  by 
Joseph  Bonaparte  to  Count  Miot  de  Melito. 
We  receive  them  from  the  memoirs  of  that 
gentleman,  who  had  intimate  relations  with 
Joseph  for  many  years.  "I  cannot  disguise 
from  myself,"  said  Napoleon,  "that  I  shall 
only  be  secure  on  my  throne  when  not  a  sin- 
gle Bourbon  is  in  existence;  and  there  is  now 
one  less  of  them.  He  [the  Due  d'Enghien] 
was  the  last  of  the  great  Conde's  blood;  the 
last  heir  of  the  grandest  and  fairest  name 
of  that  house.  He  was  young,  bright,  coura- 
geous, and  consequently  my  most  dangerous 
enemy.  It  was  a  sacrifice  absolutely  neces- 
sary for  KYiy  safety  and  my  greatness.  And 
not  only  would  I  do  what  I  have  done  over 
again,  if  necessary,  but,  to-morrow,  if  I  had 
the  chance,  I  would  do  the  same  by  the  last 
two  scions  of  the  family."  ^  Here,  frankly  dis- 
closed, is  the  purely  personal  motive  which 
^  Miot  de  Melito,  p.  354. 


74    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

seldom  fails  to  come  to  light  in  the  doings  of 
Napoleon,  whenever  we  are  able  to  catch  a  pri- 
vate expression  of  his  feeling  or  his  thought. 
It  was  not  for  the  peace  of  France  that  the 
Bourbon  prince  was  dragged  lawlessly  from  a 
neutral  country  to  be  shot;  but  that  violence 
to  civilization  was  done  because  "my  safety 
and  my  greatness  "  required  the  young  prince's 
death. 

So,  too,  when  he  compelled  his  brother 
Jerome  to  repudiate  his  marriage  with  Miss 
Patterson,  of  Baltimore,  he  put  the  demand 
upon  the  ground  that  Jerome  must  "wash 
away  the  dishonor  with  which  he  has  stained 
my  name.  .  .  .  His  duty  to  me  is  sacred."  * 

The  educational  system  of  France  was  re- 
organized Napoleonically,  with  a  single  eye 
to  the  stamping  of  that  idea,  of  a  primary  and 
sacred  obligation  of  duty  to  the  emperor,  on 
the  minds  of  the  young.  The  direction  of  all 
teaching  was  centred  in  an  "  Imperial  Univer- 
sity," the  first  text-book  provided  for  which 
was  a  catechism  that  formulated  the  political 
teaching  in  these  words :  "  We  owe  to  our 
emperor.  Napoleon  I,  love,  respect,  obedi- 
ence, fidelity,  military  service,  tributes  de- 
»  New  Letters,  April  22, 1805. 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  75 

creed  for  the  defense  of  the  empire  and  of  his 
throne.  .  .  .  We  are  under  obligation  to  per- 
form all  these  duties  toward  him,  because 
God  has  crowned  him  with  manifold  gifts  in 
war  as  in  peace,  establishing  him  as  our  sov- 
ereign, the  instrument  of  His  power,  and  giv- 
ing him  His  own  likeness  upon  earth."  ^ 

Public  interests  and  public  rights  were 
thrust  so  entirely  into  the  background  of  all 
Napoleon's  political  views,  —  all  his  policy  was 
self-centred  and  self -motived  so  entirely,  — 
that  finally  he  was  outspoken  in  declaring 
the  fact,  even  to  the  public  ear.  In  1810  he 
had  thoughts  of  adopting  the  elder  son  of  his 
brother  Louis,  to  make  him  the  heir  of  his 
throne,  and  he  published  officially  in  the 
Moniteur  the  following  admonition  that  he 
had  addressed  to  the  child :  "  You  are  never 
to  forget,  in  whatever  position  you  may  be 
placed  by  my  policy  and  the  interests  of  my 
empire,  that  your  first  duty  is  to  me,  your 
next  to  France.  Every  other  kind  of  duties, 
even  those  toward  the  people  whom  I  might 
intrust  to  your  care,  come  afterward."  ^ 

In  the  memoirs  of  Lucien  Bonaparte,  that 

*  Fournier,  p.  409. 

'  Pasquier,  vol.  i,  p.  426. 


76    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

ablest  and  most  independent  of  Napoleon's 
brothers  protests  against  the  supposition  that 
the  latter's  wars  were  forced  upon  him;  that 
he  ever  "  made  war  contrary  to  his  own  choice 
at  any  time  in  his  career."  His  ambitions,  says 
Lucien,  "  made  war  a  personal  necessity  to 
him " ;  ^  and  that  is  the  ugly  fact  which  the 
admirers  of  this  great  modern  slaughterer 
have  tried  most  to  disguise. 

The  barbaric  spirit  in  Napoleon  was  mani- 
fested not  only  in  the  nature  of  his  ambitions, 
^^  but  in  the  demoniac  savagery  of  his 

Savagery  will.  Resistance  simply  maddened  it 
oi  Mb  wm.        _        .       _,,  .  ^  '^    .       ,       ., , 

to  lerocity.  inis  appears  m  a  horrible 

incident  related  by  Constant,  his  devoted  va- 
let, in  those  curious  memoirs  which  contradict 
the  adage,  that  no  man  can  be  a  hero  to  his 
valet.  Constant  accompanied  his  master  to 
the  camp  at  Boulogne,  when  armies  and  naval 
forces  were  assembled  there,  ostensibly  in  pre- 
paration for  the  invasion  of  England.  One 
morning  the  emperor  gave  orders  for  a  naval 
review  on  the  open  sea,  and  then  departed 
upon  a  horseback  ride  which  kept  him  absent 
for  some  hours.  Meantime  Admiral  Bruix,  the 
naval  commander,  saw  the  approach  of  a  dan- 

i  Fouruier,  p.  251. 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  77 

gerous  storm,  and  stopped  preparations  for 
the  review.  When  Napoleon  returned  and 
found  that  such  a  liberty  had  been  taken  with 
his  commands  he  was  enraged,  and  a  scene 
occurred  which  Constant  relates  as  follows: 
*^  ^Monsieur  admiral,'  said  the  emperor,  ^why 
have  you  not  executed  my  orders?'  'Sire,' 
replied  the  admiral,  with  respectful  firmness, 
*a  horrible  tempest  is  rising;  your  majesty 
can  see  it  as  well  as  I.  Will  you  expose  use- 
lessly the  lives  of  so  many  brave  men  ?  * 
'Sir,'  returned  the  emperor,  more  and  more 
irritated,  '  I  have  given  orders ;  again  I  ask, 
why  have  you  not  carried  them  out?  The 
consequences  concern  me  only.  Obey  me.' 
'  Sire,  I  will  not  obey,'  said  the  admiral.  ^  You 
are  insolent,'  cried  the  emperor,  and  he  ad- 
vanced, making  a  threatening  gesture  with 
the  riding  whip  in  his  hand.  Admiral  Bruix 
recoiled  a  step  and  put  his  hand  on  the  hilt 
of  his  sword.  '  Sire,'  said  he,  very  pale,  take 
care.'  All  present  were  frozen  with  fright. 
The  emperor  stood  motionless  for  a  moment, 
his  hand  raised,  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  ad- 
miral, who  kept  his  defensive  attitude.  At 
length  the  emperor  threw  his  whip  to  the 
ground,  and  M.  Bruix,  dropping  his  sword, 


78    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

waited  in  silence,  with  uncovered  head,  the 
result  of  the  dreadful  scene.  Turning  then  to 
Vice-Admiral  Magon,  the  emperor  said  to  him, 
*You  will  execute  instantly  the  movement 
I  have  ordered.  As  for  you,'  he  continued, 
looking  at  Admiral  Bruix, '  you  will  quit  Bou- 
logne within  twenty-four  hours  and  retire 
into  Holland.  Go !  * "  ^  Thereupon,  to  satisfy 
the  crazed  egotism  of  a  heartless  tyrant, 
the  unfortunate  fleet  was  sent  out  of  harbor 
in  the  teeth  of  a  tempest  which  made  quick 
wreck  of  more  than  twenty  gunboats  and 
strewed  the  neighboring  coast  with  the  corpses 
of  more  than  two  hundred  drowned  men. 
When  the  inevitable  disaster  came.  Napoleon 
was  very  active  and  conspicuous  in  efforts 
to  rescue  its  victims,  and  the  admiring  valet 
who  tells  this  tale  seems  to  think  that  the  im- 
perial crime  was  more  than  atoned. 

If  the  Napoleonic  despotism  had  been  no 
more  than  hard  and  even  heartless  there  might 
be  specious  arguments  in  defense  of  it ;  but 
nothing  that  could  palliate  its  barbarities  can 
cloak  the  meannesses  in  his  government,  the 
pettiness  of  spirit  in  it,  and  the  frauds  and 

*  Memoires  de  Constant,  premier  valet  de  chambre  de  VEm- 
pereurt  $ur  la  vie  privee  de  Napoleon,  vol.  i,  ch.  xiii.  Paris : 
1830. 


NAPOLEON:   A  PRODIGY  79 

the  lies.  Its  meanness  was  illustrated  in  his 
petty-minded  persecution  of  the  ablest  woman 
of  her  generation,  Madame  de  Stael.  He  said 
"  she  inspired  thought  in  people  who  had  never 
taken  it  into  their  heads  to  think  before,  or 
who  had  forgotten  how/'  and  he  drove  her 
from  France.  For  years  he  pursued  her, 
through  malignant  and  insulting  directions 
which  he  gave  personally  to  his  police.  "  Do 
not  allow  that  jade  to  come  near  Paris,"  was 
the  sort  of  order  that  he  flung  at  intervals  to 
the  head  of  the  police. 

There  was  no  department  of  his  govern- 
ment which  Napoleon  kept  more  carefully  un- 
der his  own  searching  eye  and  his  his  corps 
own  directing  hand  than  that  of  the  «*  spies, 
police.  His  correspondence  is  full  of  personal 
orders,  informations,  rebukes  to  its  ministerial 
chiefs,  showing  how  much  he  planned  and  su- 
pervised the  meanest  details  of  its  work,  es- 
pecially in  espionage  and  in  the  suppression 
of  free  speech.  He  was  far  too  distrustful, 
however,  to  depend  on  the  fidelity  and  effi- 
ciency of  the  regular  poHce,  but  organized  cir- 
cles within  circles  of  his  own  private  corps  of 
spies,  each  watchful  of  the  other  and  all,  to- 
gether, infesting  court,  government,  and  so- 


80    A   STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN    MEN 

ciety  at  large  with  thousands  of  treacherous 
eyes.  In  the  "Secret  Memoirs"  that  I  have 
quoted  heretofore  it  is  said  that  these  spies 
^'  pervaded  every  part  of  the  administration, 
both  civil  and  military;  they  obtained  a  foot- 
ing about  all  the  great  personages  of  the  state ; 
they  penetrated  into  their  families,  into  their 
private  societies.  This  band,  which  he  jokingly 
called  his  telegraphic  company,'  was  inde- 
pendent of  the  general  police,  whose  agents, 
charged  with  watching  strictly  over  the  peo- 
ple, were  themselves  no  less  rigidly  watched. 
The  number  of  these  dangerous  stipendiaries 
amounted  in  the  month  of  March,  1803,  to 
three  thousand  six  hundred  and  ninety-two. 
.  .  .  Gentry  of  place  and  title,  writers  and 
merry-andrews,  workmen-  and  state  annuitants 
...  and  all  that  youth,  beauty,  the  graces  and 
agreeable  talents  could  produce,  of  the  most 
seductive  kind  in  each  sex,  was  to  be  met  with 
in  this  society."  ^ 

Upon  the  press  Napoleon  was  his  own  spy. 
Not  an  unsanctioned  or  undictated  word  could 
be  printed  without  calling  forth  a  sharp  per- 
sonal reprimand  to  the  head  of  police  from  the 
imperial  pen.    His  correspondence  is  full  of 

1  Doris,  Secret  Memoirs,  pp.  94,  243,  and  249. 


NAPOLEON:   A  PRODIGY  81 

such  notes  as  this,  of  April,  1808,  calling 
attention  to  some  newspaper  publication  of 
extracts  from  sermons  of  the  day:  "I  had 
forbidden  the  newspapers  to  refer  to  priests, 
sermons,  or  religion.  .  .  .  Will  the  police  be 
good  enough  to  do  my  will  ?  "  At  another  time, 
in  the  midst  of  hasty  preparations  for  the 
war  of  1809  with  Austria,  he  has  leisure  to 
notice  that  a  French  archbishop  has  mani- 
fested some  prayerful  interest  in  the  illness 
of  the  ex-Queen  of  Spain,  and  he  writes  there- 
upon :  "  Let  me  know  why  the  clergy  ask  the 
people's  prayers  for  any  person  without  leave 
from  the  government." 

As  for  political  discussion  in  the  news- 
papers, he  established  his  system  of  imperial 
management  in  1806,  when  he  wrote  to  Tal- 
leyrand :  "  It  is  my  intention  to  have  the  po- 
litical articles  for  the  Moniteur  written  by 
officials  in  the  Foreign  Office,  and,  after  I  have 
observed  for  a  month  how  these  are  done,  I 
shall  forbid  the  other  newspapers  to  discuss 
politics  otherwise  than  in  imitation  of  the  ar- 
ticles in  the  Moniteur T 

Worse  than  the  meanness  of  Napoleon's  des- 
potism was  its  falsity.  He  scorned  the  civil- 
ized estimates  of  honor,  honesty,  and  truth, 


82    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN   MEN 

declared  his  belief  in  lying  and  knavery, 
as  fine  arts  in  the  conduct  of  life,  more  espe- 
cially in  government,  and  was  boast- 
Meanness  ful  of  his  proficiency  in  both.  No 
Shameless  One  could  know  him  better  than  Ma- 
Faisity.  (Jamc  dc  Remusat,  who  was  the  neigh- 
bor and  friend  of  Josephine  before  her  mar- 
riage to  Napoleon,  and  who  became  her  most 
trusted  ''  lady-in-waiting  "  from  the  beginning 
of  the  Consulate  until  Josephine's  divorce. 
For  ten  years  she  lived  as  closely  to  the  man, 
saw  as  much  of  him  behind  the  scenes  of 
his  great  theatre,  and  talked  with  him  as 
intimately,  as  any  person  could.  She  entered 
his  household  with  a  worshipful  admiration  of 
his  seeming  greatness,  and  she  gave  up  her 
admiration  very  slowly;  but  it  vanished  utterly 
in  the  end.  Her  final  verdict  was  this :  "  No 
man,  it  must  be  allowed,  was  ever  less  lofty 
of  soul.  There  was  no  generosity,  no  true 
greatness  in  him.  I  have  never  known  him 
to  admire,  I  have  never  known  him  to  com- 
prehend, a  fine  action.  He  always  regarded 
every  indication  of  good  feeling  with  suspicion; 
he  did  not  value  sincerity,  and  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  he  recognized  the  supe- 
riority of  a  man  by  the  greater  or  less  dexter- 


NAPOLEON:   A   PRODIGY  83 

ity  with  which  he  practiced  the  art  of  lying. 
On  the  occasion  of  his  saying  this  he  added, 
with  great  complacency^  that  when  he  was  a 
xjhild  one  of  his  uncles  had  predicted  that  he 
should  govern  the  world,  because  he  was  an 
habitual  liar."  ^ 

Chancellor  Pasquier,  who  had  large  oppor- 
tunities for  knowing  him  well,  pronounced  a 
similar  judgment,  in  the  candid  and  dispas- 
sionate memoirs  that  he  left :  ^^  His  [Napo- 
leon's] heart,"  wrote  the  chancellor,  "  was  bare 
of  that  which  could  enlighten  it  as  to  the  advan- 
tage to  be  derived  from  generous  impulses."  ^ 
Such  testimony  prepares  us  to  trust  the  ac- 
count which  Talleyrand  gave  to  Madame  de 
Remusat  of  a  talk  with  Napoleon  in  1813, 
when  the  cynical  frankness  of  the  latter  in 
disclosing  the  completeness  of  his  own  moral 
debasement  might  otherwise  exceed  belief. 
"In  reality,"  he  is  reported  to  have  said, 
"there  is  nothing  noble  or  base  in  the  world. 
I  have  in  my  character  all  that  can  contrib- 
ute to  secure  my  power,  and  to  deceive  those 
who  think  they  know  me.  Frankly,  I  am  base, 
essentially  base.    I  give  you  my  word  that 

^  Rdmusat,  vol.  i,  p.  6. 
2  Pasquier,  vol.  i,  p.  160. 


84    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

I  should  feel  no  repugnance  to  commit  what 
would  be  called  by  the  world  a  dishonorable 
action."  ^ 

That  he  carried  such  theories  of  dishonor 
and  dishonesty  into  practice  systematically  is 
beyond  dispute.  Even  in  their  day  it  was  dis- 
coverable that  his  war  bulletins  and  reports 
were  painted  thick  with  lies  :  lies  to  magnify 
his  victories,  to  minify  his  failures,  to  steal 
even  little  scraps  of  glory  from  his  subor- 
dinates, or  to  smirch  them  with  the  blame  of 
his  own  mistakes;  but  the  full  extent  of  the 
meanness  and  the  shameless  audacity  with 
which  that  system  of  lying  was  carried  on  did 
not  come  to  light  till  later  times.  "  The  whole 
truth,''  says  Bourrienne,  his  private  secretary, 
"never  appeared  in  Bonaparte's  dispatches, 
when  it  was  in  any  way  unfavorable  to  him- 
self. .  .  .  He  not  unfrequently  altered  the 
dispatches  of  others."  ^ 

A  flagrant  example  of  the  many  attempts 
he  made  to  falsify  history  for  his  own  glorifi- 
cation appears  in  his  dealing  with  the  facts  of 
the  battle  of  Marengo.  It  was  the  most  impor- 
tant to  him  of  his  greater  victories,  because  it 

*  Kdmusat,  vol.  i,  p.  8. 

'  Bourrienne,  vol.  i,  p.  260. 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  85 

established  his  prestige  and  affirmed  his  power 
at  the  beginning  of  his  consular  reign ;  and 
yet,  of  all  his  battles,  it  appears  *to  have  been 
the  least  creditable  to  himself.  Personally  he 
had  lost  it,  and  it  was  won  back  for  him  by  a 
division-general,  Desaix.  For  almost,  if  not 
quite,  the  only  time  in  his  career,  he  had  been 
deceived  as  to  the  position  of  the  enemy,  and 
had  divided  his  army,  on  the  day  before  the 
battle,  sending  Desaix  with  his  division  to 
make  a  movement  which  proved  to  be  gravely 
mistaken  in  plan.  The  Austrians  surprised  him 
by  an  attack  in  overpowering  numbers,  and  his 
troops  had  given  way,  when  the  tide  was  turned 
suddenly  by  the  reappearance  of  Desaix.  That 
admirable  officer  had  heard  the  sound  of  battle; 
had  caught  its  meaning  instantly;  had  recog- 
nized that  his  own  movement  was  a  mistake,  and 
had  turned  back.  By  rapid  marching  he  arrived 
at  the  critical  moment  of  Napoleon's  defeat, 
and  died  leading  a  charge  which  recovered  the 
lost  field.  In  Napoleon's  report  of  the  battle 
no  hint  of  these  circumstances  is  allowed  to  ap- 
pear; and,  to  make  sure  of  their  suppression 
in  official  documents,  at  least,  he  caused  all  of 
the  reports  of  his  subordinates  to  be  destroyed. 
From  his  dispatch,  as  we  find  it  in  the  sixth 


86    A  STUDY  OF   GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

volume  of  the  "Correspondance  de  Napoleon 
I,  publiee  par  ordre  de  I'Einpereur  Napoleon 
III"  (pp.  360-362),  I  quote  the  story  as  he 
told  it  of  the  victory  that  was  snatched  from 
defeat.  "The  battle," he  wrote,  "appeared  lost. 
We  allowed  the  enemy  to  advance  wdthin  gun- 
shot of  the  village  of  San  Giuliano,  where  De- 
saix's  division  was  in  line,  with  eight  pieces  of 
light  artillery  in  front  and  two  battalions  in 
close  column  on  the  wings.  All  the  fugitives 
were  rallied  behind  it.  Already  the  enemy  com- 
mitted faults  which  presaged  disaster  to  them ; 
their  wings  were  too  extended.  The  presence 
of  the  First  Consul  reanimated  his  troops. 
*  Children,'  he  said  to  them,  ^  remember  that  it 
is  my  habit  to  sleep  on  the  battlefield.'  To 
cries  of  Vive  la  Repuhlique!  Vive  le  Premier 
Consul!  Desaix  charged  the  centre  of  the  op- 
posing line.  In  an  instant  the  enemy  was  over- 
thrown." That  is  the  whole  mention  of  Desaix's 
agency  in  the  battle.  Nothing  in  it  of  credit 
to  him  for  being  there,  at  the  village  of  San 
Giuliano,  at  the  opportune  time  for  rallying 
a  routed  army  and  shattering  the  victorious 
foe.  Nothing  to  show  that  he  had  not  been 
there  from  the  first  of  the  fight,  and  by  the 
wise  arrangements  of  his  chief.    Nothing  to 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  87 

spare  one  honest  shred  from  the  glory  of  the 
self-glorifying  First  Consul,  whose  animating 
presence  is  set  forth  as  the  all-suf&cient  ex- 
planation of  what  occurred. 

One  of  the  gravest  of  Napoleon's  failures  was 
in  the  siege  of  Acre ;  but  he  covered  it  from 
public  knowledge  at  the  time  by  a  daring  fal- 
sification of  facts.  He  announced  that  he  had 
destroyed  the  town  and  its  fortifications,  and 
had  taken  a  great  number  of  prisoners,  but 
had  refrained  from  entering  the  place  because 
plague  was  raging  within  it.  The  truth  was, 
that  the  town,  supported  by  the  British  fleet 
of  Sir  Sidney  Smith,  had  withstood  his  utmost 
efforts,  and  that  he  retreated  from  it,  and  from 
Syria,  with  nothing  to  show  for  his  ambitious 
undertaking  in  the  field  of  his  Asiatic  dreams. 
There  was  nothing  to  shame  him  in  the  fail- 
ure, but  there  is  infamy  in  the  boastful  lying 
with  which  he  tried  to  cover  it  up. 

The  diplomacy  of  Napoleon  was  systematic  i 
in  faithlessness  and  deceit.  He  gave  to  every 
c:overnment  and  people  that  had  deal-  his  Paitt- 
mgs  with    him  some   experience  or  macy. 
knavish  tricks.  Our  own  country  went  through 
the  experience  in  a  peculiarly  mortifying  way. 
In  1809  it  had  been  suffering  for  three  years 


88    A   STUDY   OF   GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

from  the  attempts  of  France  and  England,  in 
their  warfare,  to  destroy  neutral  trade.  It  had 
tried  to  retaliate  by  President  Jefferson's  exper- 
iment of  an  "  embargo,"  with  no  effect  on  the 
conduct  of  the  belligerents ;  and  then  Congress 
passed  a  conditional  act  of  non-intercourse, 
or  non-importation,  which  President  Madison 
should  enforce  against  each  of  the  offending 
powers  till  its  orders  and  edicts  against  neutral 
trade  were  withdrawn.  Thereupon  Napoleon 
gave  notice  to  the  American  minister  at  Paris 
that  his  decrees  were  "  revoked,"  and  President 
Madison,  trusting  the  announcement,  pro- 
claimed it,  suspending  the  operation  of  the  act 
so  far  as  concerned  importations  from  France, 
but  interdicting  entries  from  British  ports.  He 
soon  found  that  he  had  been  duped.  American 
ships  that  ventured  within  reach  of  the  knavish 
despot  were  seized,  as  before,  and  no  satisfac- 
tion or  explanation  could  be  obtained.  There 
was  never  a  sign  that  the  decrees  had  been  re- 
voked. Napoleon  had  thought  the  opportunity 
good  for  embroiling  the  United  States  with 
Great  Britain,  and  did  not  hesitate  to  employ  d 
falsehood  to  that  end.^ 

>  H.  Adams,  H%st<yry  of  the  United  States,  1801-1817,  vol 
V,  cbs.  vii-xiy,  xvi,  xviii. 


NAPOLEON:   A  PRODIGY  89 

For  many  years  Napoleon  played  upon  the 
inextinguishable  hope  of  the  Poles  that  their 
broken  nation  might  be  restored,  deluding 
them  with  expectations  of  his  help,  in  order 
to  use  them  against  Russia ;  while  always,  when 
it  suited  him  to  turn  a  pacific  face  toward  the 
Russian  or  Austrian  court,  he  was  giving  secret 
assurances  there  that  Poland  had  nothing  to 
hope  for  from  him. 

In  like  manner  he  tricked  the  king  of 
Prussia  into  a  disgraceful  alliance  with  him- 
self, by  a  tempting  pledge  of  the  electorate  of 
Hanover,  from  which  the  English  had  been 
expelled.  A  little  later,  when  he  came  to  dis- 
cuss terms  of  peace  with  Great  Britain,  he 
offered  the  restoration  of  Hanover  as  freely 
as  if  the  Prussian  treaty  bore  no  such  pledge. 

Treaties  meant  no  more  to  him  than  tricks 
of  the  moment  for  winning  some  advantage  in 
his  stupendous  games.  He  had  no  thought  of 
being  bound  by  them  longer  than  they  served 
his  ends.  In  1805,  when  he  forced  the  Dutch 
into  an  alliance  with  himself  against  England, 
he  engaged  by  treaty  to  secure  the  restoration 
to  them  of  any  colonies  they  might  lose  in  the 
war.  Two  years  later,  when  preparing  to  com- 
pel them  to  accept  his  brother  Louis  as  their 


90    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

king,  he  wrote  to  Talleyrand :  "  The  arguments 
to  be  brought  to  bear  with  the  Dutch  are,  that 
otherwise  I  will  not  see  that  a  single  one  of 
the  colonies  lost  to  England  is  restored  to  them 
when  peace  is  made." 

After  Louis  had  been  seated  on  the  throne 
of  Holland,  Napoleon  extorted  from  him  a 
treaty  which  ceded  important  parts  of  Dutch 
territory  to  France,  and  placed  the  whole  Dutch 
coast  under  French  military  surveillance.  In 
return  for  this,  the  treaty  provided  for  a  re- 
moval of  existing  restrictions  on  Dutch  trade 
with  France.  When  the  faithless  extortioner 
of  the  treaty  had  secured  what  it  gave  to  him, 
he  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  the  demands  of  his 
brother  for  fulfillment  of  its  terms  on  his  own 
side.  The  French  restrictions  on  Dutch  trade 
were  not  removed ;  and  this  was  one  of  the 
causes  of  the  disgusted  action  of  Louis  Bona- 
parte, who  sickened  of  the  puppet  part  he  had 
to  play  and  abandoned  his  fiction  of  kingship, 
taking  refuge  in  Austria  from  his  brother's 
wrath. 

But  Spain,  among  the  victims  of  Napoleonic 
faithlessness  and  falsity,  suffered  most.  The 
series  of  treacheries  and  frauds  that  were  prac- 
ticed, in  the  infamous  process  of  the  theft  of 


NAPOLEON:   A  PRODIGY  91 

her  crown,  began  with  an  illusory  treaty  for 
the  partitioning  of  Portugal,  in  which  Godoy, 
the  base  minion  who  ruled  the  Spanish  court, 
should  share.  Under  cover  of  this  vile  bar- 
gain, French  armies,  ostensibly  in  transit  to 
Portugal  through  Spain,  got  the  footing  on 
Spanish  soil  which  placed  the  government  of 
the  kingdom  in  their  power.  Of  all  the  iniqui- 
ties in  Napoleon's  career,  the  successive  trans- 
actions in  this  Spanish  undertaking  are  nearly, 
if  not  quite,  the  most  glaring  in  their  display 
of  the  baseness  of  the  man.  Even  the  unscru- 
pulous Talleyrand  claims  to  have  remonstrated 
against  the  rankness  of  his  master's  cheating 
in  the  rascally  game,  and  to  have  been  jeered 
at  for  doing  so  when  the  game  seemed  won. 
"  See,"  cried  Napoleon  to  him,  "  what  all  your 
predictions  as  to  the  difficulties  I  should  en- 
counter, in  regulating  the  affairs  of  Spain  ac- 
cording to  my  views,  have  amounted  to.  I  have 
overcome  these  people;  they  have  all  been 
caught  in  the  nets  I  spread  for  them,  and  I  am 
master  of  the  situation  in  Spain,  as  in  the  rest 
of  Europe."  ^  This  was  the  fated  delusion  of 
the  man,  cheating  himself  more  ruinously  than 
others  were  cheated  by  him.  He  had  caught 

»  Talleyrand,  vol.  i,  p.  288. 


92    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

in  his  nets  and  overcome  —  not  Spain,  but  the 
corrupted  Spanish  court.  When  the  Spanish 
people  woke  to  the  consciousness  of  their  sit- 
uation, they  broke  his  fine-spun  webs,  and 
started  forces  in  motion  that  overcame  hiniy 
and  cast  down  the  whole  false  fabric  of  his 
power. 

If  anything  in  the  history  of  Napoleon  can 
be  fouler  than  his  treatment  of  Spain  we  find 
Toussaint  ^^  ^^  ^^s  dealings  with  the  revolted 
rouverture.  blacks  of  San  Domingo,  and  the  per- 
fidious barbarity  with  which  Toussaint  TOuver- 
ture  was  lured  into  captivity  and  done  to  death. 
In  one  of  the  historical  essays  of  Mr.  Henry 
Adams  the  revolting  story  is  traced  through 
official  documents  in  the  French  archives,  and 
told,  for  the  most  part,  in  the  words  of  the 
agents  employed,  and  in  those  of  the  master 
whose  commands  they  obeyed.  The  tale  opens 
in  1801,  when  Napoleon,  then  First  Consul, 
being  momentarily  at  peace  with  England,  pre- 
pared to  "annihilate,"  as  he  expressed  his  in- 
tention, "  the  government  of  the  blacks  at  San 
Domingo."  He  sent  for  the  undertaking  a  great 
army  and  fleet,  with  his  brother-in-law,  Gen- 
eral Leclerc,  in  command.  Leclerc  bore  a  pro- 
clamation to  the  blacks,  which  said  to  them: 


NAPOLEON:   A  PRODIGY  93 

*^  The  government  sends  you  the  Captain-gen- 
eral Leclerc.  He  brings  with  him  great  forces  to 
protect  you' against  your  enemies,  and  against 
the  enemies  of  the  republic.  If  you  are  told, 
'  these  forces  are  intended  to  ravish  your  lib- 
erty from  you/  reply, '  The  republic  has  given 
us  liberty ;  the  republic  will  not  suffer  it  to  be 
taken  from  us.* "  General  Leclerc  bore  also  a 
personal  letter  from  the  First  Consul  to  Tous- 
saint  rOuverture,  the  extraordinary  leader  who 
had  risen  among  the  African  ex-slaves,  who 
had  checked  the  destructive  frenzy  of  their 
revolt,  and  who  had  organized  a  government 
which  restored  the  ruined  island  to  an  orderly 
and  promising  state.  The  letter  was  sweetened 
with  friendly  assurances  in  every  word.  "  As- 
sist the  captain-general  with  your  counsels, 
your  influence,  and  your  talents,"  it  said  to 
Toussaint.  "  What  can  you  desire,  —  the  lib- 
erty of  the  blacks?  You  know  that  in  every 
country  where  we  have  been  we  have  given  it 
to  the  people  who  had  it  not."  Then  come 
personal  flatteries  and  promises:  "After  the 
services  you  have  rendered,  and  those  you  can 
render  in  these  circumstances,  together  with 
the  particular  sentiments  we  have  for  you,  you 
should  not  be  uncertain  of  your  consideration, 


94    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

your  fortune,  and  the  honors  that  await  you." 
Such  were  the  words  of  the  master  of  France 
to  Toussaint  and  to  the  blacks  at  large;  but 
now  listen  to  the  secret  instructions  he  gave 
to  Leclerc :  "  The  instant  you  shall  have  rid 
yourself  of  Toussaint,  Christophe,  Dessalines, 
and  the  principal  brigands,  and  the  masses  of 
the  blacks  shall  be  disarmed,  send  back  to  the 
Continent  all  the  blacks  and  mulattoes  who 
have  played  a  part  in  the  civil  troubles." 

Neither  Toussaint  nor  his  followers  yielded 
to  the  wiles  of  Leclerc  at  once,  and  the  cap- 
tain-general was  employed  for  some  months 
in  a  campaign  which  drove  them  to  the  moun- 
tains and  induced  their  submission  at  last.  In 
May,  1802,  Leclerc  reported  to  his  government 
the  terms  on  which  he  had  accepted  the  sur- 
render of  Toussaint;  they  were  as  follows: 
"  He  must  surrender  to  me  at  the  Cape,  and  I 
would  give  him  my  word  of  honor  that  after 
the  conference  he  should  have  the  liberty  to 
go  where  he  would."  Toussaint  surrendered 
accordingly ;  and  one  month  later  Leclerc  wrote 
to  Napoleon:  "I  have  taken  a  step  that  will 
do  much  good  to  the  colony.  I  have,  as  I 
warned  you,  arrested  General  Toussaint,  and 
I  send  him  to  France  to  you,  with  all  his  fam- 


NAPOLEON:   A  PRODIGY  95 

fly.  .  .  .  He  had  written  me  to  complain  of 
my  having  stationed  troops  at  Dennery,  which 
he  had  chosen  as  his  residence.  I  answered 
that,  to  remove  all  ground  of  complaint,  I 
authorized  him  to  confer  with  General  Brunet 
on  the  station  of  the  troops  in  that  canton. 
He  went  to  General  Brunet.  There  he  was 
arrested  and  embarked."  No  doubt  this  was 
written  by  Leclerc  and  read  by  Napoleon  with 
pride  in  the  successful  perfidy  of  the  act. 

And  now  the  sinister  story  becomes  tragic. 
Napoleon  wrote  approvingly  to  Leclerc  :  "  The 
arrival  of  Toussaint  has  been  extremely  honor- 
able to  you,"  and  he  signed  a  secret  decree 
ordering  Toussaint  to  be  imprisoned  in  the 
fortress  of  Joux,  in  the  Jura  Mountains,  and 
to  be  kept  there  in  solitude  and  secrecy,  with- 
out power  to  write  or  speak  to  any  person 
save  the  servant  who  should  attend  him.  Ev- 
idently there  was  hope  of  finding  grounds 
on  which  he  could  be  disposed  of  in  some 
plausibly  legal  way;  for  Leclerc  was  asked 
to  forward  proofs  against  him.  Leclerc,  how- 
ever, was  compelled  to  report  that,  since  the 
amnesty  granted  to  Toussaint,  there  was  no 
guilt  of  anything  to  be  proved  against  him. 
Whatever,  therefore,  should  be  done  with  the 


96    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

captive  Dominican  patriot  and  statesman  must 
be  done  by  naked  despotism,  with  no  pretense 
of  law.  Helped  by  the  winter  cold  of  the  Jura 
Mountains,  the  Napoleonic  despotism  was  equal 
to  that  need.  As  winter  approached,  Tous- 
saint  failed  in  health.  His  jailer,  reporting 
weekly,  wrote  on  the  30th  of  October :  "  He 
has  continual  indispositions,  caused  by  inter- 
nal pains,  headaches,  and  some  attacks  of  fe- 
ver which  are  not  continuous.  He  complains 
always  of  cold,  though  making  a  great  fire.  . . . 
No  one  is  allowed  to  see  him  but  myself." 
Then  the  well-instructed  jailer  adds  this,  which 
he  must  have  written  with  an  evil  grin  on  his 
face :  "  The  constitution  of  negroes  resembling 
in  no  respect  that  of  Europeans,  I  dispense 
with  giving  him  either  physician  or  surgeon, 
who  would  be  useless  for  him."  Five  months 
of  this  most  intelligent  jailer  work  sufficed. 
On  the  19th  of  March  a  promising  report  went 
from  Joux  to  Paris :  "  The  situation  of  Tous- 
saint  is  always  the  same.  He  complains  con- 
tinually of  pains  in  the  stomach,  and  has  a 
continual  cough ;  for  some  days  he  has  kept 
his  left  arm  in  a  sling  on  account  of  pains. 
I  perceive  that  in  the  last  three  days  his 
voice  is  much  changed."    Three  weeks  later, 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  97 

on  the  9th  of  April,  1803,  the  faithful  and  suc- 
cessful jailer  made  his  final  and  most  satisfying 
report :  "  I  had  the  honor  to  render  you  an 
account  of  Toussaint's  condition  by  my  letter 
of  the  16th  germinal  [April  6th].  The  17th, 
at  eleven  and  a  half  o'clock  in  the  morning,  on 
carrying  his  food  to  him,  I  found  him  dead, 
seated  on  his  chair,  near  the  fire."  ^ 

This  tale  needs  no  comment. 

The  evidence  now  submitted  seems  more 
than  enough  to  support  my  contention  that 
the  false,  faithless,  perfidious  barbarism  and 
baseness  of  spirit  which  characterize  pettiness 
the  despotism  of  Napoleon  are  in-  °'Spiiit. 
congruous  with  any  right  conception  of  great- 
ness in  a  man.  But  there  was  a  pettiness  of 
spirit  in  his  nature  that  seems  more  incongru- 
ous still.  It  was  manifested  conspicuously  in  the 
increasing  servility  of  etiquette  that  he  forced 
his  court,  his  military  officers,  and  even  his 
family  to  submit  to,  as  fast  as  his  honors 
grew.  After  his  Austerlitz  campaign,  it  is 
said,  his  brothers  were  not  allowed  to  sit  in 
his  presence,  and  did  not  venture  to  address 
him  without  being  spoken  to.  His  wife,  Jose- 

^  Historical  Essays.   By  Henry  Adams.     Essay  4.  New 
York  :  Charles  Scribner's  Sons.    1891. 


98     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

phine,  no  longer  ventured  to  use  the  famil- 
iar "thou"  in  speaking  to  him,  but  addressed 
him  always  as  "  Your  Majesty."  To  sit  while 
others  stood  appears  to  have  been  a  mark  of 
superiority  that  was  specially  gratifying  to  his 
vanity.  He  exacted  it  in  camp  as  well  as  in 
court.  In  the  curious  memoirs  of  his  valet  it 
is  related  that,  when  the  emperor  was  with  the 
army  assembled  at  Boulogne,  his  chair  was  the 
only  seat  in  the  room  where  he  held  long 
councils  with  his  marshals  and  generals,  and 
they  stood  sometimes  for  hours.  Even  at  St. 
Helena  the  petty  gratification  of  such  servile 
forms  of  deference  was  required  for  him,  and 
the  unfortunate  officers  who  went  with  him, 
to  solace  his  captivity,  often  stood  in  his  pres- 
ence till  they  were  ready  to  drop  with  fatigue. 
There  was  nothing  less  than  paltriness  and 
vulgarity  of  mind  in  the  eager  appetite  he 
showed  for  every  kind  of  formality  that  would 
signify  the  inferiority  of  others  to  himself. 
Madame  de  Remusat  relates  the  particulars  of 
a  scene  which  was  one  of  the  first  to  reveal  to 
her  the  vulgar  spirit  of  the  man.  With  Bona- 
parte (then  First  Consul)  and  Madame  Jose- 
phine, she  was  a  guest  one  day  at  dinner  with 
the  Consul's  elder  brother,  Joseph.  Their  mo- 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  99 

ther  was  of  the  party,  and  Joseph,  with  fiHal 
propriety,  had  arranged  to  give  her  the  place 
of  honor  at  the  table.  This  arrangement  was 
resented  by  Napoleon,  who  claimed  precedence 
and  consideration  even  before  his  mother,  and 
even  in  the  family  circle.  When  dinner  was 
announced  he  seized  his  wife's  arm,  drew  her 
quickly  to  the  table,  in  advance  of  all,  and 
seated  her  and  himself  as  he  desired.^ 

This  petty-minded,  jealous  exaction  of  every 
possible  show  of  deference  to  himself  gave 
the  taint  of  vulgarity  as  well  as  barbarity  to 
all  his  despotism.  Thirteen  Koman  cardinals 
who  failed  to  accept  invitations  to  the  cer- 
emony of  his  marriage  with  Marie  Louise  of 
Austria  were  arrested,  exiled,  their  property 
sequestrated,  and  they  were  forbidden  to 
wear  their  official  dress.^  The  Archbishop  of 
Bologna,  guilty  of  the  same  offense  to  the  des- 
pot, was  compelled  to  resign.  Giving  personal 
orders  for  this,  Napoleon  wrote :  "  Shameful 
conduct  of  a  man  whose  infamous  debauch- 
eries I  have  concealed,  by  intervening  with 
my  authority  and  interrupting  the  course  of 
criminal  proceedings  at   Bologna."^   "Infa- 

*  R^musat,  vol.  i,  p.  116.       '  Pasquier,  vol.  i,  pp.  406,  407. 
8  New  Letters,  1810,  April  3. 


100    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

mous  debaucheries  "  of  the  Archbishop  could 
be  disregarded  by  the  omnipotent  lord  of  Italy, 
but  not  a  slight  to  his  august  invitations. 

In  Napoleon's  treatment  of  the  Pope  there 
was  not  only  an  insolent  defiance  to  all  Cath- 
Na  oieon  ^^^^  Europe,  and  a  wanton  outrage  to 
and  the  its  feeling,  but  there  was  a  mean  per- 
sonal malignity  as  well.  He  had  seized 
the  Papal  States  and  annexed  them  to  France. 
Thereupon  (June,  1809)  the  Pope,  Pius  VII, 
employing  his  sole  weapon  of  defense,  issued 
a  bull  of  excommunication  against  all  who  had 
taken  part  in  these  acts,  naming  none.  In  the 
following  month,  by  the  emperor's  order,  he 
was  arrested  like  a  criminal,  and  taken  from 
Rome,  to  be  kept  in  rigorous  imprisonment, 
first  at  Savona,  Italy,  and  finally  at  Fontaine- 
bleau,  in  France,  for  five  years.  His  treatment 
in  that  period  was  regulated  personally  by 
Napoleon,  and  the  progressive  meanness  and 
malice  of  it  are  shown  by  such  orders  as  the  fol- 
lowing, quoted  from  his  published  letters:^ — 

November  28,  1810.  "  Give  orders  that  all 
letters  written  by  the  Pope,  or  by  members  of 
his  household,  and  all  those  sent  to  the  Pope, 
or  to  his  household,  are  to  be  forwarded  to 
Paris." 

>  New  Letters,  1810-1811. 


/ 


NAPOLEON:   A  PRODIGY  101 

January  1,  1811.  "As  the  Pope  has  been 
misbehaving  himself  at  Savona,  I  desire  you 
will  give  orders  that  the  carriages  I  had  placed 
at  his  disposal  should  be  sent  back  to  Turin, 
and  that  his  household  expenses  should  not 
he  allowed  to  exceed  12,000  to  15,000 /rancs 
[$2500  to  $3000]  a  year.  Make  sure  that  no 
letters  are  received  at  Savona,  or  sent  from 
there." 

January  2,  1811.  "  The  Pope  is  stirring 
up  disorder  everywhere.  .  .  .  He  is  sending 
whole  sheets  of  diatribes  in  all  directions.  .  .  . 
The  prefect  is  the  only  person  who  must  be 
allowed  to  see  him." 

January  6, 1811.  "  As  I  desire  to  protect  my 
subjects  from  the  rage  and  fury  of  this  igno- 
rant and  peevish  old  man,  I  hereby  order  you 
to  notify  him  that  he  is  forbidden  to  commu- 
nicate with  any  church  of  mine,  or  any  of  my 
subjects,  on  pain  of  the  punishment  consequent 
on  his  disobedience  and  theirs.  .  .  .  Tell  him 
that  a  man  who  preaches  rebellion,  and  whose 
soul  is  full  of  hatred  and  malice,  ceases  to  be 
the  mouthpiece  of  the  Church.  .  .  .  He  shall 
see  that  I  am  strong  enough  to  do  as  my  pre- 
decessors did  before  me, and  depose  a  pope.  .  .  . 
You  will  leavehim  no  paper, nor  pens,norinkf 
nor  any  means  of  writing" 


102    A  STUDY   OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

The  "predecessors"  referred  to  in  this  last 
order  were  those  sovereigns  of  the  early  Ger- 
manic-Roman empire  who  controlled  the  pa- 
pacy for  a  time.  Napoleon  had  reconciled  him- 
self in  a  measure  to  the  loss  of  that  oriental  and 
entirely  barbaric  career  of  conquest  for  which 
his  ambition  thirsted  always,  but  he  did  so  by 
turning  to  the  dark  ages  of  Europe  for  sub- 
stitute or  secondary  ideals  of  grandeur  in  life. 
Since  fortune  forbade  his  being  a  second  Al- 
exander, or  a  second  Mahomet,  and  he  could 
not  venture  in  the  modern  world  to  claim  di- 
vinity for  himself,  he  found  his  highest  attain- 
able satisfaction  in  fancying  that  he  had  re- 
vived or  recreated  the  empire  and  the  glory 
of  Charlemagne.  "You  see  in  me  Charle- 
magne"; "I  am  Charlemagne,  —  yes,  I  am 
Charlemagne," — were  his  boastful  exclama- 
tions more  than  once,  on  occasions  when  his 
arrogant  temper  exploded-  in  abusive  ha- 
rangues to  people  who  had  crossed  his  will. 
It  came  even  with  deliberation  from  his  pen, 
as  well  as  angrily  from  his  tongue.  Writing, 
in  1806,  to  his  uncle,  Cardinal  Fesch,  who 
represented  him  at  the  papal  court,  before  he 
had  broken  up  that  court,  his  command  was : 
"Say  to  him  [the  Pope]  that  I  am  Charle- 


NAPOLEON:   A  PRODIGY  103 

magne,  the  Sword  of  the  Church,  their  em- 
peror, and  that  I  propose  to  be  treated  as 
such."^  It  was  a  vulgar  pose;  the  pose  of  an 
imitator  who  saw  nothing  in  Charlemagne  but 
an  embodiment  of  barbaric  domination,  and 
was  wholly  incapable  of  appreciating  or  tak- 
ing lessons  from  the  real  majesty  of  character 
in  that  large-minded  chieftain  of  a  rude  age. 
I  apply  the  term  vulgar,  as  I  apply  the 
terms  mean  and  barbaric,  to  Napoleon,  be- 
cause there  seem  to  be  no  others  that  will  de- 
scribe certain  exhibitions  of  his  nature  so  cor- 
rectly. There  was  a  fundamental  coarseness  in 
him,  morally,  mentally,  and  temperamentally, 
which  expressed  itself  habitually  in  vulgarisms, 
as  well  as  in  barbarisms  and  meannesses  of 
word  and  deed.  He  had  the  talent  of  an  actor, 
along  with  other  talents,  and  he  had  all  the 
pleasing  capabilities  of  a  facile  mind.  By  abun- 
dant testimony  we  know  that  he  could  be  an 
agreeable  companion  when  it  suited  his  humor 
to  be  agreeable.  He  could  act  the  part  of  a 
gentleman,  as  he  could  act  many  parts;  but 
when  he  put  on  the  manner  of  courtesy  and 
the  disposition  of  amiability,  it  must  have  been 
as  an  actor  dresses  himself  for  the  stage,  in  cos- 

*  Foumier,  p.  331. 


104    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

tumes  that  are  not  proper  to  his  natural  self. 
According  to  many  witnesses  there  was  little 
to  indicate  the  gentleman  in  his  manner  and 
bearing  at  court,  after  the  full  inflation  of  his 
arrogant  consciousness  of  power.  "He  cast 
off/'  says  Fournier, "  all  semblance  of  courtesy. 
He  would  say,  for  instance,  to  a  lady  [at  his 
receptions],  after  she  had  stated  her  name, 
*  0  Heavens !  I  had  been  told  you  were  pretty ' ; 
or,  to  an  old  man,  ^  You  have  not  much  longer 
to  live,'  and  such  like  urbanities."  ^  This  agrees 
with  another  account  of  his  receptions  as  em- 
peror, which  states  that  when  he  walked  about, 
preceded  by  chamberlains  who  announced  him, 
^^he  never  remembered  a  name,  and  his  first 
question  to  ladies  was,  'And  what  do  you  call 
yourself  ? ' "  The  coarse  feeling  and  vulgar  qual- 
ity of  the  man  was  displayed  most  offensively 
at  the  Erfurt  meeting  of  emperors,  kings,  and 
princes,  in  1808,  where  he  invited  Prince  Wil- 
liam of  Prussia  to  a  rabbit-hunt  on  the  battle- 
field of  Jena,  and  had  some  of  his  soldiers,  in 
the  presence  of  the  Tsar,  relate  incidents  of 
their  exploits  during  the  then  recent  war  with 
Bussia. 

By  these  and  other  things  that  I  find  in  the 

*  Fournier,  pp.  411,  412. 


NAPOLEON:  A  PRODIGY  105 

vastly  voluminous  records  of  Napoleon  and  his 
career  I  feel  myself  forbidden  to  regard  him 
as  I  wish  to  regard  Great  Men.  I  can- 

.  T  •  •  1       ^^®  Empty 

not  think  of  his  meaner  qualities  with-  outcome  o« 
out  contempt,  and  I  cannot  think  of  "**'' 
contemptibility  and  greatness  as  possibly  exist- 
ing together  in  the  same  man.  Nor,  amazed  as 
I  am  at  the  marvel  of  his  life,  can  I  think  of  it 
as  representing  a  great  career.  Its  emptiness 
of  great  results  was  declared  long  ago,  with 
truth  and  candor,  by  his  private  secretary. 
*^Not  having  done  for  the  welfare  of  man- 
kind what  he  undertook  for  his  own  glory," 
wrote  Bourrienne,  "posterity  will  judge  him 
by  what  he  has  achieved.  He  will  have  full 
credit  for  his  victories,  but  not  for  his  con- 
quests, which  produced  no  result,  and  not  one 
of  which  he  preserved.  His  claim  to  the  title 
of  one  of  the  greatest  captains  that  ever  lived 
will  be  undisputed ;  but  he  left  France  less  than 
when  she  was  trusted  to  him,  and  less  than  she 
had  been  left  by  Louis  XIV.  His  brilliant  cam- 
paign in  Italy  gave  Venice  to  Austria  and  the 
Ionian  Isles  to  England.  His  Egyptian  expe- 
dition gave  Malta  to  the  English,  destroyed 
our  navy,  and  cost  us  22,000  men.  The  civil 
code  is  the  only  one  of  Bonaparte's  legislative 


106    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

acts  which  can  be  sanctioned  by  philosophy  and 
reason.  All  his  other  laws  were  nnll,  and  rested 
only  on  his  existence.  Did  he,  either  as  consul 
or  emperor,  contribute  to  the  happiness  of 
France  ?  Posterity  will  answer  in  the  negative."  * 
This  I  judge  to  be  a  verdict  that  will  stand. 
The  one  benefaction  to  France  or  to  the 
world  that  it  finds  for  credit,  to  offset  the  hor- 
rible reckoning  of  death,  misery,  crime,  and 
wrong  in  the  Corsican's  bloody  career,  is  the 
code  of  law  which  bears  his  name.  And  how 
much  of  that  was  his  work?  Even  the  project 
of  the  codification  of  law  was  not  his  own.  It 
had  been  in  the  minds  of  the  men  of  the  Rev- 
olution, but  postponed  by  the  commotions  of 
the  time,  till  he  had  opportunity  to  take  it  up, 
and  commit  it  to  a  selected  body  of  the  ablest 
jurists  of  France.  Sometimes  he  presided  at 
their  sittings,  and  is  said  to  have  surprised 
them  on  occasions  by  the  shrewdness  and  prac- 
tical value  of  the  suggestions  he  made.  That 
kind  of  contribution  to  such  a  work  is  precisely 
what  a  mind  like  his,  of  electric  quickness  and 
alertness,  could  make;  but  nothing  that  went 
deep  into  the  principles  of  law  can  have  come 
from  him.  He  had  no  interest  in  the  principles 
'  Bourrienne,  vol.  i,  pp.  394,  395. 


NAPOLEON:   A  PRODIGY  107 

of  things,  no  knowledge  in  matters  that  rest 
upon  principles,  no  faculty  for  dealing  thought- 
fully with  them.  The  Code  Napoleon,  so  called, 
was  Napoleon's  work  no  farther  than  this: 
that  he  had  the  intelligence  to  recognize  a 
need  for  it,  and  the  power  to  have  it  done.* 

I  have  said  that  he  had  no  interest  in  the 
principles  of  things,  and  no  knowledge  in  mat- 
ters that  rest  upon  principles.  This  fact  is  very 
marked  in  his  attitude  of  mind  toward  eco- 
nomic questions.  He  expressed  it  frankly  in  one 
of  his  letters  to  Fouche,  his  minister  of  police, 
— a  notorious  rascal,  but  a  remarkably  able 
man.  ^^  I  have  received,"  he  wrote,  ^*a  farrago 
which  you  have  sent  me  on  the  subject  of  the 
corn  trade,  and  which  is  perfectly  ridiculous. 
It  is  mere  political  economists'  chatter.  .  .  . 
These  arguments  are  pitiful  in  themselves,  but 
they  have  one  great  drawback,  —  that  of  en- 
couraging the  commercial  community  to  lec- 
ture the  government,  to  open  discussion  and 
disturb  men's  minds.  The  administration  has 
nothing  to  do  with  political  economy."  ^  Thus 
he  scorned  persistently  all  suggestions  of  eco- 
nomic principle  in  the  fiscal  and  commercial 

*  Pasquier,  vol.  i,  p.  249. 
KNew  Letters,  Julj  28, 1809. 


108     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

measures  of  his  government,  and  pursued  a 
course  of  headstrong  blundering  in  them,  from 
beginning  to  end. 

Summing  conclusions,  it  is  to  be  said  of 
Napoleon  that  a  more  extraordinary  man  in 
some  respects  has  never  appeared  in  the  world ; 
that  no  man  ever  scored  on  the  face  of  the  his- 
tory of  his  own  time  a  deeper,  heavier,  more 
sanguinary  mark;  that  no  such  deep  mark  was 
ever  effaced  more  completely  when  the  pain, 
the  grief,  the  crimes  and  oppressions  that 
scored  it  were  cured  by  the  healing  of  the 
years.  Taken  out  of  the  imperial  wrappings  in 
which  he  came  to  be  vestured,  and  scrutinized 
in  his  bare  personality,  as  a  man,  the  astonish- 
ing Corsican  is  seen  to  be  so  dwarfed  in  soul, 
so  small  and  mean  in  the  dispositions  of  his 
feeling,  so  destitute  of  all  nobility  of  nature, 
that  we  cannot  call  him  a  Great  Man  without 
defiling  the  idea. 


in 

CROMWELL:    IMPERFECT   IN 
GREATNESS 


in 

CROMWELL:   IMPERFECT  IN   GREATNESS 

For  the  understanding  of  Oliver  Cromwell, 
and  of  the  English  regicide  revolution  in  which 
Cromwell  bore  the  chief  part,  it  is  necessary 
to  have  clear  ideas  of  Puritanism.  In  its  con- 
sequences, and  partly  in  its  causes,  the  revo- 
lution was  a  political  one,  but  its  animations 
were  supplied  to  it  most  powerfully  by  that 
religious  movement  of  the  English  mind,  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  which  underwent  many 
changes  and  divisions,  but  which  remained 
Puritanic  through  them  all,  according  to  the 
original  signification  of  the  term. 

The  seeds  of  Puritanism  were  in  the  Pro- 
testant appeal  from  the  Church  to  the  Bible,  as 
the  sole  depository  of  God's  law,  and 
its  root  was  in  the  feeling  of  an  imme-  ot  pnntan- 
diate,  close  personal  relation  and  com- 
munication between  each  devout  soul  and  its 
Creator,  which  came  necessarily  from  that  Bib- 
lical faith.  To  look  straightly  to  the  Bible  for 
spiritual  light  and  teaching,  instead  of  taking 
them  secondarily,  through  a  mediiun  of  inter- 


112    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

preting  authority  in  the  Church,  led  not  only 
to  a  new  view  of  the  Church,  as  the  organ  of 
Christian  faith  and  worship,  but  led  also  to  a 
new  view  of  worship,  and  of  all  devotional 
attitudes  and  exercises  of  the  human  spirit. 
Priestly  functions  in  worship,  and  the  ritual, 
the  form  and  ceremony  which  go  naturally  with 
sacerdotalism,  were  depreciated  inevitably  in 
this,  which  came  to  be  known  in  England  as 
the  Puritan  view.  It  was  developed  peculiarly 
in  England,  partly  by  the  seriousness  of  the 
English  character,  and  partly  by  circumstances 
which  gave  a  peculiar  shaping  to  the  outcome 
of  the  English  secession  from  Rome.  That 
secession  had  been  controlled  in  the  beginning 
by  an  absolutely  despotic  king,  who  made  it 
an  act  of  separation,  simply,  with  nothing  of 
change  in  the  Church  excepting  the  substitu- 
tion of  himself  for  the  Pope  as  its  head. 

The  Church  of  England  then  created  was 
organized,  like  the  Roman  Church,  under  a 
hierarchy  of  archbishops,  bishops,  and  other 
official  clergy,  and  it  adhered  to  a  ritualized 
or  ceremonial  worship,  not  much  changed  from 
the  ancient  forms.  Substantial  departures  in 
doctrine  were  introduced  under  Edward  VI 
and  Elizabeth,  when  the  prayer-book  of  the 


CROMWELL  113 

new  Church  was  composed  and  Thirty-nine 
Articles  of  a  positive  creed  were  affirmed  and 
prescribed;  but,  so  far  as  sacerdotalism  and  cer- 
emonious worship  were  concerned,  there  was 
little  concession  to  that  simplifying  demand 
which  arose  naturally,  as  I  have  said,  from 
Protestant  views.  During  the  reign  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  the  demand  had  considerable  Eng- 
lish growth,  and  it  was  then  that  the  name  of 
"Puritans"  was  acquired  by  those  who  made 
it  heard.  Their  want,  as  they  described  it, 
was  more  purity  of  worship  in  the  Church  — 
more  of  spirit,  less  of  form.  Generally,  they 
had  no  desire  to  alter  the  constitution  of  the 
Church. 

Though  the  influence  of  Calvin  was  be- 
ginning to  be  felt  strongly  in  England,  his 
scheme  of  presbyterian  organization,  to  dis- 
place the  episcopal,  was  not  taken  up  to  an 
important  extent  by  the  early  Puritans,  most 
of  whom  were  faithful  to  the  communion  of 
their  national  Church  and  strove  only  for  a  re- 
laxation of  its  liturgical  forms.  So  far  as  the 
Calvinistic  constitution  of  Christian  churches 
was  favored,  and  so  far  as  congregational  sep- 
arateness  was  sought,  those  sectarist  depar- 
tures, of  Presbyterians  and  Independents,  can 


114     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

only  be  regarded  as  offshoots  or  branches  of 
one  strenuous  movement  of  religious  feeling, 
which  takes  a  fitting  name  from  the  Puritans 
of  the  Elizabethan  age. 

Puritanism  was  intensified  peculiarly  in  Eng- 
land by  the  persisting  effort  of  the  Crown  and 
The  Purl-  the  hierarchy  of  the  Church  to  put 
tan  Revolt.   ^^  j^^^^  ^^^11^  Elizabeth  lived  the 

Crown  was  practically  omnipotent,  and  all  re- 
sistance to  it  was  weak;  but  it  lost  half  of 
its  prestige  and  strength  when  a  foolish, 
conceited,  bad-mannered,  and  often  ludicrous 
king  came  from  Scotland  to  represent  it,  and 
made  clumsy  attempts  to  wield  the  sceptre  of 
the  Tudors  in  their  autocratic  way.  Then 
everything  touched  oppressively  by  the  royal 
hand  took  courage  to  resist,  and  oppressed  Pu- 
ritanism was  the  quickest  to  be  moved  by  the 
spirit  of  revolt.  Both  political  and  religious 
feeling  rose  slowly  to  the  white  heat  of  revolu- 
tion, during  forty  years  of  provocation  from 
the  first  two  Stuart  kings;  but  the  steadiest, 
surest  fermentation  of  it  was  always  on  the 
spiritual  side.  Neither  suppression  of  Parlia- 
ment, nor  lawless  taxation,  nor  prostitution 
of  courts  hardened  the  temper  of  the  nation 
so  much  as  the  ritualistic  despotism  of  King 


CROMWELL  115 

Charles  and  Archbishop  Laud.  The  fact  that 
the  real  animus  of  revolution  was  in  Puritan- 
ism became  plain  when  the  crisis  of  civil  war 
was  reached.  Then  those,  like  Falkland  and 
Hyde,  who  had  opposed  the  King  on  political 
grounds  chiefly,  went  over  to  his  support,  and 
the .  party  that  took  arms  against  him  was  es- 
sentially Puritanic  throughout.  In  the  battle 
years  of  the  revolution  no  man  came  to  any  real 
leadership  on  the  parliamentary  side  who  was 
not  actuated  more  profoundly  by  religious 
than  by  political  feelings  and  aims.  With  all 
else  that  he  embodied  of  personal  genius  and 
power,  Cromwell  could  never  have  borne  the 
part  that  he  did  in  that  great  transaction  if 
he  had  not  been  a  Puritan  of  Puritans,  —  the 
perfected  Puritan  type.  My  wish  is  to  show 
what  went  to  the  making  'of  that  type. 

The  career  of  Oliver  Cromwell,  like  that  of 
Napoleon  Bonaparte,  w^as  opened  to  him  by  a 
great  upheaval  which  overturned  an  ancient 
monarchy  and  slew  its  king.  Like  Napoleon, 
he  took  the  fallen  sceptre  into  his  own  hands, 
acquiring  it,  like  Napoleon,  by  the  prestige  of 
the  soldier  and  the  mandate  of  the  sword.  So 
far,  in  the  bare  outlines  of  circumstance,  the 
parallel  of  their  careers  is  exact ;  but  in  every 


116    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

particular  that  gives  a  historic  quality  to  the 
men  and  a  meaning  to  their  lives  they  ran 
divergent  courses  from  first  to  last.  The  sur- 
passing strength  of  both  was  in  a  surpass- 
ingly energized  and  centred  will,  which  car- 
ried the  lesser  energies  and  weaker  wills  of 
other  men  into  strains  of  action  that  ran  obe- 
diently with  theirs.  Of  character  in  common 
between  them  there  was  nothing  else. 

But,  before  touching  questions  of  quality 
or  character  in  Cromwell,  it  will  be  best,  as  in 
the  discussion  of  Napoleon,  to  recall  the  stage- 
setting  and  the  chief  incidents  of  the  nota- 
ble drama  in  which  his  remarkable  part  was 
performed. 

Oliver  Cromwell  owed  his  family  name,  and 
a  little  of  the  blood  in  his  veins,  to  the  an- 
oromweu  ccstry  of  Thomas  Cromwell,  the  ill- 
country  famed  minister  of  Henry  VIII.  A 
Gentleman,  sister  of  that  wreckcr  and  robber  of 
monasteries  married  one  Wilhams,  a  Welsh- 
man, who  dropped  his  own  name  to  take  his 
wife's,  transmitting  it  thereby  to  his  great- 
grandson,  Oliver,  and  with  it  a  strain  of  Celtic 
blood  which  had  influence,  no  doubt,  in  mat 
ing  Oliver  Cromwell  what  he  was.  The  lattei 
sprang  from  a  younger  branch  of  the  family 


CROMWELL  117 

thus  new-named,  which  had  a  modest  but 
substantial  place  among  the  gentry  of  Hun- 
tingdonshire. He  was  born  at  Huntingdon, 
not  far  from  Cambridge,  on  the  25th  of 
April,  1599.  He  spent  his  boyhood  and  had 
his  schooling  in  that  town,  till  his  entrance  to 
Sidney  Sussex  College  at  Cambridge,  which 
occurred  on  the  day  of  Shakespeare's  death,  — - 
the  23d  of  April,  1616 ;  a  fact  which  led  Car- 
lyle  to  say  impressively,  in  his  introduction  to 
Cromwell's  letters:  ^'The  first  world -great 
thing  that  remains  of  English  History,  the 
Literature  of  Shakespeare,  was  ending;  the 
second  world-great  thing  that  remains  of  Eng- 
lish History,  the  armed  appeal  of  Puritan- 
ism to  the  invisible  God  of  Heaven,  .  .  .  was, 
so  to  speak,  beginning."  Cromwell's  college 
matriculation,  however,  can  hardly  be  thought 
of  as  marking  any  point  of  beginning  in  his 
career.  He  was  a  student  at  Cambridge  for 
only  a  year,  when  his  father's  death  brought 
him  away,  and  there  is  no  evidence  that  he 
returned.  It  is  not  likely  that  he  had  any 
taste  for  the  student  life,  or  would  get  muclf 
from  it.  Tradition  has  it  that  he  went  to  Lon 
don  and  read  law  for  a  time,  but  the  state- 
ment is  not  proved.    The  next  certain  fact  of 


118     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

his  life  is  his  marriage,  which  occurred  in  his 
twenty  -  second  year.  Thereafter,  for  eleven 
years,  he  farmed  the  small  estate  which  his 
father  had  left;  then  sold  it  and  rented  a 
grazing  farm  at  St.  Ives,  not  far  away.  In 
1636  he  fell  heir  to  some  property  from  an 
uncle,  which  carried  with  it  the  farming  of 
the  cathedral  tithes  of  Ely,  and  this  led  to  his 
removal  to  Ely,  where  he  or  his  family  resided 
till  his  engagement  in  great  affairs  of  the 
nation  took  him  and  them  into  very  different 
scenes. 

History  has  little  knowledge  of  this  plain 
gentleman  farmer  of  the  Fen  Country  during 
the  first  two  thirds  of  his  fifty-nine  years  of 
life.  In  all  that  period  he  was  a  man  as  little 
in  the  public  eye  as  any  of  the  kingdom,  with- 
in his  modest  class.  Two  or  three  brief  let- 
ters from  his  pen  that  have  survived,  and  a 
few  very  slight  records  or  mentions  of  him  in 
contemporary  writing,  afford  all  the  glimpses 
of  himself  or  his  doings  that  the  most  search- 
ing biographer  has  been  able  to  catch.  That 
he  won  leadership  among  his  neighbors  quite 
early  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  they  elected 
him  to  parliament  from  Huntingdon  in  1628, 
he  being  then  twenty-nine  years  of  age. 


CROMWELL  119 

It  was  the  parliament  which  fairly  opened 
the  long  conflict  with  Charles  I ;  which  passed 
the  famous  Petition  of  Right,  and  af-  inparua- 
ter  the  dramatic  dissolution  of  which  "•**• 
England  had  no  parliament  for  eleven  years. 
We  can  be  sure  that  Cromwell,  as  a  member, 
was  with  his  cousin,  John  Hampden,  and  with 
Eliot  and  Pym,  and  all  the  grand  patriots  of 
that  day,  in  his  voting ;  but  his  place  in  the 
great  council  of  the  Commons  was  among  the 
silent  and  obscure.  According  to  its  jour- 
nal he  spoke  but  once,  a  few  words  only,  to 
call  attention  to  a  preaching  of  "  flat  popery," 
as  he  styled  it,  at  St.  Paul's  Cross.  And  so  he 
comes  upon  the  stage  of  public  life  as  a  Puri- 
tan, from  the  first.  How  much  and  in  what 
ways  he  helped,  during  the  next  eleven  years, 
to  fan  the  kindling  anger  of  the  people  in  his 
own  district,  while  the  king  extorted  *^  ship- 
money,"  and  Laud  practiced  his  stupid  tyranny 
in  the  churches,  and  the  flogging  and  ear- 
cropping  of  good  men  were  made  familiar 
spectacles  in  London,  and  some  thousands  of 
disheartened  Puritans  went  to  exile  on  Massa- 
chusetts Bay,  we  are  not  told ;  but  no  temper 
is  likely  to  have  been  more  fermentable  than 
his  in  those  days,  or  more  energetic  in  the  dif- 


120     A  STUDY   OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

fusion  of  its  heat.  That  he  was  naturally  hot  in 
temper,  and  that  it  broke  from  him  too  readily 
in  early  life,  is  beyond  dispute.  Once,  in  1630, 
he  was  taken  to  London  under  arrest,  for  un- 
seemly wrathful ness  in  speech  to  the  mayor 
and  aldermen  of  Huntingdon,  concerning  an 
unpopular  new  charter  they  had  procured. 
Ten  years  later,  when  he  sat  in  parliament 
again,  Mr.  Hyde,  afterward  Earl  of  Clarendon, 
acting  as  chairman  of  a  committee  which  gave 
a  hearing  to  disputants  from  Cromwell's  dis- 
trict over  an  inclosure  of  common  lands,  had 
an  experience  of  that  gentleman's  passionate 
rudeness  of  speech  which  he  remembered  to 
describe  with  some  bitterness  in  the  history 
that  he  wrote.  But  this  hot  blood  in  the  man 
was  brought  under  resolute  discipline  at  last, 
by  a  will  which  mastered  everything  within 
him  and  without. 

In  many  ways  he  was  a  roughly  fashioned 
man;  not  coarse,  by  any  means, — for  much  of 
fine,  sweet  quality  in  him  is  plainly  to  be  seen ; 
but  the  surface-growth  of  character  and  man- 
ner was  rude,  —  made  so,  no  doubt,  by  the 
very  simplicity  and  straightforward  action  of 
the  tremendous  store  of  force  in  the  man.  He 
was  as  careless  of  his  personal  appearance  as 


CROMWELL  121 

he  was  careless  of  polite  ways.  A  fastidious 
listener,  who  heard  him  speak  in  parliament  a 
little  before  the  beginning  of  his  greater  ca- 
reer, described  him  as  being  "  very  ordinarily 
appareled/'  with  "linen  not  very  clean/'  his 
"  countenance  swollen  and  reddish,  his  voice 
sharp  and  untunable,"  "his  eloquence  full  of 
fervor,"  and  observed  that  he  "was  much 
hearkened  to,"  which  seems  to  have  caused 
this  critical  auditor  some  surprise.  Thus  homely 
and  inelegant  he  stands  pictured  to  us,  just  as 
Fame  is  summoning  him  to  her  temple,  for 
the  laurel  crown  of  heroic  immortality  and  for 
its  stately  robe. 

The  long  interruption  of  constitutional  gov- 
ernment was  ended  by  an  outbreak  of  revolt, 
not  in  England  itself,  but  in  Scotland,  the 
original  Stuart  realm.  There,  Calvinism  and 
the  Presbyterian  form  of  church  government, 
introduced  at  the  Reformation  by  John  Knox, 
had  become  the  very  roots  of  the  national  faith, 
and  when  Charles  and  Laud  attempted  to  put 
their  clergy  under  bishops  and  to  force  a 
prayer-book  on  their  churches  the  Scots,  by 
thousands,  signed  a  solemn  national  covenant 
to  defend  their  kirk  and  took  arms  to  make 
the  covenant  good.  This  Scottish  revolt  com- 


122     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

pelled  the  king  to  summon  an  English  parlia* 
ment,  in  the  spring  of  1640,  and  ask  its  help ; 
but  it  showed  a  temper  when  it  met  that 
alarmed  him,  and  he  dissolved  it  in  three 
weeks.  For  a  few  months  longer  he  strove  with 
the  Scots,  trying  to  fight  them  with  an  army 
which  he  could  not  pay,  and  was  driven  in 
the  end  to  face  another  English  parliament 
with  another  appeal. 

This,  the  famous  Long  Parliament,  which 
ruled  England  for  the  next  dozen  years,  came 
together  in  November,  1640,  and  made  haste, 
with  irresistible  determination,  to  strip  the 
king  of  powers  he  had  usurped  and  preroga- 
tives he  had  abused :  declaring  its  own  indis- 
solubility by  any  royal  command ;  annulling 
the  illegal  doings  of  late  years ;  abolishing  or 
restricting  the  jurisdiction  of  tribunals  which 
had  served  the  ends  of  despotism;  sending 
evil  counselors  of  the  king  to  the  Tower,  and 
Strafford,  the  most  feared  among  them,  to  the 
headsman's  block.  Cromwell  sat  in  this  parlia- 
ment, as  he  had  done  in  the  "Short  Parlia- 
ment "  that  preceded  it,  and  unquestionably  he 
was  active,  but  he  had  no  prominence  in  its 
work.  In  the  great  chapter  of  history  that 
was  now  being  written,  Pym,  Hampden,  Vane, 


CROMWELL  123 

St.  John,  Falkland,  Hyde,  Hollis,  were  still 
the  conspicuous  names.  But  CromwelFs  day 
of  fame  drew  near. 

For  a  time,  Charles  seemed  to  give  way  in 
everything  to  the  parliamentary  attack,  sign- 
ing the  bills  which  disarmed  and  humiliated 
him,  and  withholding  from  Strafford  the  royal 
protection  he  had  promised ;  but  his  scheming 
mind  was  busy  with  plots  and  projects,  which 
led  him  finally,  in  January,  1642,  to  invade  the 
precincts  of  parliament  with  an  armed  retinue, 
and  attempt  the  seizure  of  five  members  who 
had  displeased  him  most.  Warnings  had 
reached  the  threatened  members  and  they  had 
escaped.  London  rose  in  arms  to  protect  them, 
and  both  parties  to  the  conflict  between  king 
and  parliament  began  preparations  for  war. 

At  the  present  day  it  can  be  seen,  as  it 
could  not  be  seen  at  the  time,  that  the  ulti- 
mate triumph  of  parliament  in  the 

^    ,  .       ,  ,    .         Cromwell 

ensuing  war  was  determined  and  m-  ana  "the 
sured,  practically,  by  Cromwell,  and  "" 
by  him  almost  solely,  from  the  first  hour  that 
preparations  for  an  armed  struggle  began. 
That  result,  for  a  long  period  of  the  war,  de- 
pended on  local  action  in  different  parts  of 
the  kingdom,  far  more  than  on  the  ineffective 


124     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

military  administration  which  parliament  was 
able  to  organize ;  and  it  was  CromwelFs  section 
of  England,  led  and  stimulated,  unquestion- 
ably, by  him,  which  inspirited  the  whole  cause 
from  the  first,  giving  examples  of  vigor  and 
lessons  of  efficiency  in  everything  done.  The 
troop  of  horse  which  Cromwell  raised  and 
captained  at  the  outset  imparted  its  quality  to 
the  regiment  which  came  under  his  command 
in  the  early  weeks  of  1643 ;  and  in  due  time 
that  "Ironside"  regiment  became  the  model 
on  which  the  whole  parliamentary  army  was 
re-formed  and  transformed  into  an  absolutely 
invincible  force.  Nature  had  prepared  this 
farmer  of  the  Fens,  in  mind,  temper,  and 
power  of  will,  to  be  a  great  soldier,  and  re- 
ligion had  specialized  his  preparation  for  the 
particular  war  that  was  now  to  be  fought.  He 
was  quick  to  see  what  measureless  fighting 
energy  could  be  embodied  in  a  Puritan  army, 
if  its  faith  were  as  firm  and  its  zeal  as  ardent 
in  the  ranks  as  in  the  command.  He  began  at 
once,  as  he  related  afterwards  in  a  speech, 
to  enlist  "such  men  as  had  the  fear  of  God 
before  them,  and  made  some  conscience  of 
what  they  did,"  and,  as  he  could  add  with 
perfect  truth,  "they  were  never  beaten,  and 


CROMWELL  125 

wherever  they  were  engaged  against  the  enemy 
they  beat  continually."  This  was  the  winning 
principle  of  the  war.  By  Cromwell's  example 
and  his  urgency  the  army  of  parliament  came 
at  last  to  be  composed  almost  wholly  of  men 
who  "  had  the  fear  of  God  before  them,  and 
made  some  conscience  of  what  they  did  " ;  and 
its  progress  in  victory  was  at  the  rate  of  its 
advance  toward  that  character,  and  of  Crom- 
well's  advance  in  military  rank  and  command. 

But  Cromwell  did  not  put  all  trust  in  the 
spirit  of  his  men.  He  had  the  master  soldier's 
instinct  for  discipline  and  for  training  in  the 
use  of  arms.  He  took  instruction  for  himself 
and  for  his  troops  from  old  soldiers  of  the 
Thirty  Years'  War.  He  is  said  to  have  caught 
the  ideas  of  Gustavus  Adolphus,  who  is  cred- 
ited in  military  history  with  having  given  a 
new  value  to  the  horse  in  war  by  new  forma- 
tions and  a  new  handling  of  mounted  troops. 
Cromwell  seems  to  have  bettered  the  instruc 
tions  of  the  Swede,  and  to  have  made  his  cav- 
alry a  more  formidable  force  in  battle  than 
had  ever  been  realized  before. 

I  shall  not  trace  the  course  of  events  in  the 
war,  except  to  outline  the  work  of  Cromwell 
and  the  successive  steps  of  his  rise  to  the  sum- 


126     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

mit  of  military  command  and  political  power. 
During  the  first  year  of  the  war  he  was  but 
The  First  ^  cavalry  colonel,  notably  active  and 
Civil  War.  eucrgctic  in  the  counties  which  had 
formed  a  self-organized  military  district,  styled 
the  Eastern  Association,  extending  from  Essey, 
at  the  south  to  Lincoln  at  the  north.  His  vig' 
orous  operations  in  this  field  drew  such  atten- 
tion to  himself  and  his  small  command  that  a 
contemporary  memoir  dates  "the  beginning 
of  his  great  fortunes"  from  the  later  months 
of  that  first  year.  Early  in  1644  he  was  made 
lieutenant-general  of  the  forces  of  the  East- 
ern Association,  under  the  Earl  of  Manches- 
ter, and,  in  the  summer  following,  at  Marston 
Moor,  where  he  commanded  a  division  of  cav- 
alry, he  won  the  honors  of  the  first  great  battle 
and  victory  of  the  war. 

The  forces  that  fought  the  king  at  Mar- 
ston Moor  were  partly  from  Scotland,  English 
and  Scotch  having  now  made  common  cause 
against  the  oppressor  of  both.  The  northern 
nation  was  far  more  united  in  its  rebellion 
than  that  of  the  south,  and  its  assistance  to 
the  English  Puritans  in  their  struggle  had  be- 
come a  vital  need.  To  secure  it,  the  latter 
were  forced  to  submit  to  a  requirement  on 


CROMWELL  127 

the  part  of  the  Scots,  that  the  "doctrine, 
worship,  discipline  and  government"  of  "the 
Church  of  Scotland  "  —  that  is,  the  creed  and 
organization  of  Presbyterianism  —  should  he 
established  in  England  and  Ireland,  and  a 
"Solemn  League  and  Covenant"  to  that  effect 
was  subscribed  on  both  sides.  This  agree- 
ment was  acceptable  to  one  large  part  of  the 
English  Puritans,  whose  minds  were  friendly 
to  the  plan  of  a  reconstructed  national  church, 
framed  on  Calvin's  lines,  but  bitterly  objec- 
tionable to  another  large  part,  whose  thought 
and  feeling  were  against  the  dictation  by  law 
of  any  uniformity  in  creed  and  church.  The 
latter  party,  of  Independents,  was  increasing, 
and  an  increasing  variety  of  sects  was  rising 
in  it,  with  no  bond  of  unity  except  the  de- 
mand that  all  should  have  equal  freedom  to 
form  their  churches  and  conduct  their  worship 
as  they  wished.  This  opened  a  cleft  in  the 
great  Puritan  party  which  had  fatal  results. 
In  parliament  the  Presbyterians  predominated ; 
in  the  army.  Independency  was  rooted  deeply 
already,  and  was  having  a  rapid  growth.  Crom- 
well seems  to  have  been  slow  in  committing 
himself  fully  to  either  side,  and  I  believe  that 
he  strove  earnestly  to  avert  the  impending 


128      A   STUDY   OF   GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

antagonism  between  parliament  and  army  on 
the  question  of  religious  uniformity  and  an 
established  church.  With  all  his  religious  in- 
tensity he  had  a  broadly  tolerant  disposition 
of  mind,  so  far  as  concerned  Puritan  differ- 
ences of  opinion ;  but  his  Christian  toleration 
went  little  beyond  the  Puritan  line.  In  the 
end,  to  save  religious  liberty  for  Puritanism, 
he  gave  his  powerful  leadership  to  the  Inde- 
pendents, and  made  them  masters  of  the  army 
and  the  state. 

Meantime  Cromwell,  still  serving  in  parlia- 
ment as  well  as  in  the  field,  brought  about  a 
remodeling  of  the  army,  to  unify  it,  to  give  it 
more  earnest  and  energetic  chief  commanders, 
and  to  fill  it  generally,  as  he  had  filled  his  own 
regiments,  with  men  who  "had  the  fear  of 
God  before  them."  To  accomplish  the  change 
of  high  ofiicers,  parliament  adopted  a  "self- 
denying  ordinance,"  so  called,  which  incapa- 
citated its  own  members  for  military  command. 
This  retired  the  Earl  of  Essex,  the  Earl  of  Man- 
chester, and  some  other  generals  who  were  sus- 
pected of  a  lack  of  earnestness  in  the  war,  but 
likewise  it  removed  Cromwell,  himself.  His 
withdrawal  from  the  army,  however,  was  very 
brief.  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax,  appointed  to  be 


CROMWELL  129 

commander  in  chief  of  the  New  Model  Army 
(April  1,  1645),  demanded  Cromwell  for  his 
lieutenant-general,  and  the  latter,  with  permis- 
sion from  parliament,  returned  to  the  field  in 
time  to  be  the  hero  and  the  winner  of  the  deci- 
sive battle  of  Naseby  (June  14, 1645),  which 
destroyed  the  hopes  of  the  king.  What  is 
known  as  the  First  Civil  War  was  ended  in  the 
following  May,  by  the  voluntary  surrender  of 
the  king  to  the  army  of  the  Scots. 

Before  this  occurred,  the  covenant  of  par- 
liament with  the  Scots  had  been  fulfilled  in  a 
measure,  but  not  to  the  satisfaction  supremacy 
of  the  Presbyterians,  either  English  ®'  *^®  ^"^y- 
or  Scotch.  The  Presbyterian  system  of  church 
government  was  established  in  England  ex- 
perimentally, for  three  years,  in  March,  1646 ; 
but  it  took  no  root,  and,  though  the  authority 
of  the  church  assemblies  was  much  limited,  its 
working,  as  a  church  establishment,  just  suf- 
ficed to  stiffen  the  intolerant  aims  of  its  sup- 
porters and  to  harden  the  opposition  of  other 
sects. 

For  nine  months  the  king  was  in  the  cus- 
tody of  the  Scots ;  then,  having  received  par- 
tial payment  for  their  service  in  England,  they 
gave  him  up  to  parliament  and  returned  to 


130     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

their  own  land.  Both  Scotch  and  En  owlish 
leaders  had  labored  vainly  in  this  period  to  ar- 
rive at  some  agreement  with  the  stubborn  yet 
slippery  intriguer,  that  would  secure  them, 
religiously  and  politically,  against  his  former 
practices  of  absolutism,  if  they  restored  his 
throne.  The  English  were  still  patient  in  the 
same  useless  parleying  with  their  captive  king 
for  nearly  two  years  more.  He  thought  that 
the  widening  rupture  between  Independents 
and  Presbyterians  —  between  army  and  par- 
liament —  would  make  him  master  of  the  sit- 
uation, and  he  played  a  game  of  double 
dealing  with  both.  Elections  to  fill  vacancies 
in  parliament  (with  royalists  disfranchised) 
had  reinforced  the  Presbyterians,  and  they 
overestimated  their  strength.  They  dealt  fatu- 
ously with  the  army,  offering  trifles  of  pay  on 
a  long  score  of  arrears,  while  planning  the  dis- 
bandment  of  some  regiments,  the  sending  of 
others  to  Ireland,  and  treating  army  petitions 
with  angry  contempt.  The  army,  on  its  side, 
became  defiant  of  the  authority  of  parliament, 
and  acts  of  mutiny  and  violence  were  begun. 
The  regiments  ordered  to  Ireland  refused  to 
go.  A  troop  of  horse,  sent  by  nobody  knows 
whom,  took  the  king  from  his  parliamentary 


CROMWELL  *  131 

custodians,  in  June,  1647,  and  the  soldiery, 
thenceforward,  controlled  his  fate.  A  little 
later  a  peremptory  demand  went  to  parliament 
from  the  army,  that  eleven  of  the  Presbyterian 
leaders  of  the  Commons  should  be  ejected 
from  their  seats,  and  the  eleven  felt  con- 
strained to  withdraw.  This  excited  an  insur- 
rection in  London,  where  Presbyterianism 
prevailed ;  parliament  was  invaded  by  a  mob, 
and  the  speakers  of  both  houses,  with  many 
members,  left  the  city,  taking  refuge  with  the 
army,  which  had  drawn  near  to  the  town. 
Then  the  army,  led  by  Fairfax,  brought  them 
back,  entering  the  capital  in  imposing  proces- 
sion, and  establishing  itself  there  as  the  mas- 
ter power  in  the  state.  And  now,  as  such,  it 
assumed  the  character  of  a  self-organized  po- 
litical body,  by  the  formation  within  it  of  a 
representative  council,  composed  of  certain 
general  officers  in  conjunction  with  four  depu- 
ties from  each  regiment,  two  chosen  from  its 
officers  and  two  from  the  ranks. 

This  organization  of  antagonisms  in  the  great 
Puritan  party  gave  good  reason  to  the  king 
for  thinking  that  large  opportunities  were 
being  opened  to  himself.  With  sense  and  hon- 
esty he  might  have  made  much  of  them ;  by 


132    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

follies  and  falsities  he  threw  them  away.  Crom- 
well headed  a  party  in  the  army  which  still 
believed  that  the  best  settlement  of  things  in 
the  distracted  country  might  be  found  in  some 
agreement  with  Charles,  and  he  persisted  in 
negotiations  to  that  end,  though  the  army  in 
general  stood  in  bitter  opposition  to  his  course. 
He  found  at  last,  as  every  one  found  who  dealt 
with  Charles,  that  no  conclusive  agreement 
and  binding  contract  was  attainable,  by  any 
possibility,  with  that  faithless  and  shifty- 
minded  schemer.  While  the  parleyings  were 
in  progress  the  king  escaped  from  Hampton 
Court,  his  place  of  custody,  hoping,  appar- 
ently, to  make  his  way  to  France ;  but  his 
flight  ended  at  Carisbrooke  Castle,  in  the  Isle 
of  Wight,  where  he  became  a  prisoner  again. 
There  was  now  a  rapid  thickening  of  con- 
fusions in  the  whole  state  of  affairs,  with  the 
The  Second  Tcsult,  at  last,  of  a  rcopcning  of  civil 
TlToDMm^  war-  The  king  had  enlisted  the  Scots 
the  King,  in  iiig  behalf,  by  consenting  to  estab- 
lish Presbyterian  ism  in  England  for  three 
years  if  he  was  restored  to  his  throne,  and  a 
Scottish  army  crossed  the  border  in  July, 
1648,  to  cooperate  with  royalist  risings  in 
England  and  Wales.  Fairfax  crushed  the  roy- 


CROMWELL  133 

alists  in  the  southeast,  while  Cromwell  made 
short  work  of  their  rebellion  in  Wales.  The 
latter  then  hastened  northward  to  meet  the 
invading  Scots,  whose  army,  more  than  double 
his  own,  he  destroyed  in  three  days  of  battle 
and  pursuit  (August  17-19,  1648),  beginning 
near  Preston,  from  which  the  fight  takes  its 
name.  This  was  the  first  battle  in  which 
Cromwell  held  supreme  command,  and  critics 
rank  it  high  among  the  masterpieces  of  mili- 
tary skill.  It  left  little  to  be  done  for  the  fin- 
ishing of  the  Second  Civil  War. 

The  royalist  rising  had  failed,  but  it  had 
brought  to  the  surface  and  disclosed  a  very 
formidable  growth  of  public  feeling  against 
the  dominating  military  party,  Ly^d  favorable 
to  some  arrangement  for  the  restoration  of  the 
king.  The  English  Presbyterians,  while  un- 
friendly, as  a  rule,  to  the  Scottish  interfer- 
ence, had  become  inclined  to  make  common 
cause  with  Charles  ;  and  their  representatives 
in  parliament  were  encouraged  to  act  again 
with  a  bold  hand.  They  passed  persecuting 
ordinances,  which  struck  at  many  opinions 
entertained  in  the  various  Independent  or 
Congregational  sects,  and  they  reopened  ne- 
gotiations with  the  king.  By  the  time  that  the 


134    A  STUDY   OF   GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

men  of  the  army  had  returned  to  quarters 
from  the  Second  Civil  War,  they  found  a  po- 
litical coalition  of  Presbyterians  and  royalists 
against  them,  with  the  destruction  of  their 
leaders  and  the  suppression  of  their  religious 
independency  most  surely  decreed.  They  sent 
up  a  great  remonstrance,  and  parliament  re- 
fused it  even  respectful  consideration. 

Then  came  a  sharp  cutting  of  knotted  tan- 
gles in  the  situation,  by  the  soldier's  sword 
and  the  headsman's  axe.  On  the  first  day  of 
December  the  king  was  taken  suddenly  by  a 
body  of  officers  from  Carisbrooke  Castle  and 
lodged  more  securely  in  Hampshire.  On  the 
second  day  the  army  was  marched  again  into 
London.  On  the  sixth  and  seventh  a  regiment 
commanded  by  Colonel  Pride  surrounded 
Westminster  Hall  and  arrested  or  excluded 
about  a  hundred  of  those  members  of  parlia- 
ment who  had  figured  most  in  its  recent  work. 
By  this  "  Pride's  Purge,"  as  it  was  styled,  the 
Long  Parliament,  which  began  a  noble  career 
in  1640,  was  cut  down  to  the  fraction  known 
ignobly  in  history  as  "The  Rump." 

One  of  the  first  proceedings  of  The  Rump 
was  responsive  to  a  demand  from  the  army 
that  justice  should  be  done  to  the  king,  as  the 


CROMWELL  135 

guilty  author  of  the  civil  war.  On  charges  of 
treason  he  was  brought  to  trial  before  a  High 
Court,  created  by  the  appointment  of  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty-five  commissioners,  of  whom 
no  more  than  sixty-nine  were  ever  present  at 
the  sittings  of  the  court.  The  trial  was  opened 
in  Westminster  Hall  on  the  20th  of  January, 
1649,  and  closed  on  the  27th,  when  a  sentence 
of  death  was  pronounced.  The  sentence  was 
executed  three  days  later,  on  a  scaffold  erected 
at  the  front  of  the  palace  of  Whitehall. 

From  the  first  of  the  preceding  May,  when 
Cromwell  went  off  to  the  field  of  his  campaigns 
in  the  Second  Civil  War,  down  to  the  evening 
of  the  day  on  which  parliament  was  "  purged" 
of  Presbyterianism  by  Colonel  Pride,  little  is 
known  of  Cromwell's  agency  or  influence  in 
what  was  done  on  the  political  side  of  events. 
Some  things  in  his  letters  of  that  period  go  to 
show  that  he  shared  a  rising  disposition  in  the 
army  to  assert  and  exercise  authority  in  itself 
against  parliament ;  but  whether  he  did  or  did 
not  give  any  kind  of  direction  to  what  was  done 
in  the  southern  parts  of  the  island  while  he 
was  in  the  north,  is  quite  unknown.  Pride's 
work  of  "purging"  was  in  progress  when  he 
reentered  London,  after  the  absence  of  seven 


136    A   STUDY  OF   GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

months.  In  one  of  the  memoirs  of  the  time 
he  is  reported  to  have  said  that  "  he  had  not 
been  acquainted  with  this  design,  yet,  since  it 
was  done,  he  was  glad  of  it,  and  would  en- 
deavor to  maintain  it."  That  he  approved  and 
maintained  it  is  certain;  but  in  this  matter, 
and  in  many  other  doings  of  his  party  that 
have  been  laid  to  his  personal  account,  it 
seems  probable  that  he  merely  accepted  and 
made  the  best  of  what  he  had  no  personal 
agency  in  bringing  about.  He  was  singularly 
disposed,  I  think,  to  accept  the  movement  of 
events,  and  go  with  it  in  his  own  action,  in- 
stead of  exercising  the  mastery  that  is  com- 
monly supposed;  and  this  accepting  disposi- 
tion, which  I  wish  to  consider  later  on,  supplies 
to  my  mind  the  true  key  to  his  character  and 
career. 

Taking  his  seat  in  the  Rump  Parliament, 
Cromwell  bore  a  part  in  its  proceedings  against 
the  king;  but  apparently  it  was  not  a  leading 
part.  In  his  one  reported  utterance,  when  the  or- 
dinance creating  the  High  Court  was  discussed, 
he  said:  "Since  the  providence  of  God  and 
necessity  hath  cast  this  upon  us,  I  shall  pray 
God  to  bless  our  counsels,  though  I  be  not 
provided  on  the  sudden  to  give  you  counsel." 


CROMWELL  137 

This  can  only  mean  that  he  took  counsel,  ra- 
ther than  gave  it,  on  the  grave  question  before 
the  house.  But  when  it  had  been  decided  that 
the  king  should  be  tried  for  his  crimes  against 
the  nation,  and  Cromwell  was  called  to  sit 
among  the  judges,  then  the  courage  in  him 
that  never  flinched  and  the  spirit  that  knew 
no  swerving  took  their  inevitable  leadership, 
in  determining  the  doom  of  the  man  who  had 
made  himself  a  problem  which  nothing  but 
his  death  could  solve. 

The  wreck  of  constitutional  government  in 
England  had  now  left  nothing  but  a  small,  sifted 
remnant  of  the  House  of  Commons, 

Oromwell's 

elected  more  than  eight  years  before,  campaign 
to  act  with  assumed  authority  in  the 
national  name.  "Yet  this  little  band  of  men 
assumed  to  be,  not  merely  a  true  house  of 
commons  —  one  branch  of  a  true  parliament 
—  but  a  full  and  complete  government  for 
^the  Commonwealth  of  England,'  as  the  state 
was  now  described.  It  abolished  the  house  of 
lords  as  ^useless  and  dangerous,'  and  Hhe  of- 
fice of  a  king'  as  ^unnecessary,  burdensome 
and  dangerous';  and  so  it  boldly  took  all  the 
functions  of  government  into  its  own  hands." 
For  executive  action  a  council  of  state,  which 


138    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

differed  little  from  a  parliamentary  committee, 
was  appointed,  and  Cromwell,  of  course,  was 
n  its  membership.  For  active  support  this  new 
rovernment  had  not  even  the  full  streno^th  of 
the  Independents  to  depend  upon,  nor  even 
the  army  as  a  whole.  The  Levellers  (followers 
of  the  radical  agitator,  John  Lilburne)  were  a 
trouble  to  it  from  first  to  last.  But,  for  a  time 
at  least,  the  Commonwealth  had  a  passive  sup- 
port in  the  country  at  large  which  made  it 
strong.  It  is  the  opinion  of  Professor  Gardi- 
ner, the  most  candid  and  careful  of  the  histo- 
rians of  the  period,  that  "  for  every  hundred 
convinced  royalists  or  republicans  there  were 
at  least  a  thousand  who  were  ready  to  accept 
whatever  government  was  actually  in  exist- 
ence, rather  than  risk  disturbance  of  the  peace 
by  a  fresh  civil  war."  ^ 

If  England  was  tolerant  of  the  self-consti- 
tuted government  which  had  transformed  the 
ancient  kingdom  into  a  nominal  Common- 
wealth, Scotland  and  Ireland  were  not  dis- 
posed to  leave  her  in  passive  submission  to  it. 
Both  countries  were  offering  conditions  to  the 
late  king's  elder  son,  Charles,  on  which  they 
would  support  his  claims  to  the  English  throne. 
^  History  of  the  Commonwealth  and  Protectorate^  vol.  i,  p.  281. 


CROMWELL  139 

These  threatenings  gave  Cromwell  his  final 
military  tasks.  Between  midsummer  in  1649 
and  the  spring  of  1650  he  crushed  the  Irish 
combination  of  Catholic  and  Protestant  roy- 
alists in  a  horribly  merciless  campaign.  The 
savage  massacres  which  he  personally  ordered 
at  Drogheda  and  permitted  at  Wexford  have 
left  a  stain  on  his  memory  too  black  to  be 
effaced  by  his  own  defense  of  them,  —  that 
they  would  tend  to  prevent  the  future  effu- 
sion of  blood,  by  their  terrorizing  effect.  The 
campaign  in  Scotland,  following  closely  upon 
that  in  Ireland,  was  the  crowning  of  Crom- 
well's military  career.  At  the  beginning  he 
seemed  to  be  outmanoeuvred  by  the  Scottish 
general,  David  Leslie,  and  was  forced  into  a 
dangerous  position  at  Dunbar;  but  he  caught 
a  moment  of  opportunity  for  so  deadly  a  stroke 
at  the  beleaguering  enemy  that  they  were  ut- 
terly routed  and  half  destroyed  (September  3, 
1650).  This,  however,  did  not  end  the  war. 
The  Scotch,  after  exacting  from  Charles  11 
a  solemn  oath  to  uphold  the  Presbyterian 
Church  in  their  own  country  and  to  force  it 
on  England  and  Ireland,  had  crowned  him 
king  at  Scone,  and  he  had  established  his 
court  and  government  at  Perth,  under  Leslie's 


140     A   STUDY   OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

protection,  which  Cromwell  was  not  able  to 
overcome  till  the  summer  of  1651.  Then  Les- 
lie and  the  young  king,  dislodged  from  Perth 
and  Stirling,  took  what  seemed  to  be  the  only 
course  left  them,  and  led  their  army  boldly 
into  England,  with  the  hope  of  being  joined 
by  hosts  of  royalists  as  they  advanced.  Crom- 
well had  foreseen  the  movement  and  prepared 
for  it.  As  the  Scots  marched  down  the  west- 
ern side  of  the  island  he  followed  by  the  east- 
ern i-oute,  gathering  forces  on  the  way.  When 
they  reached  Worcester  he  was  in  their  path, 
and  there,  on  the  3d  of  September  exactly 
one  year  after  Dunbar,  he  finished  his  military 
work.  He  had  no  more  battles  to  fight. 

When  Cromwell  returned  from  the  field  of 

war  to  the  seat  of  government,  his  rank,  no 

less  than  his  personal  prestio^e,  made 

Cromwell       ,  .  •      n       i       i         i      r.    i 

the  Head  of  uim  practically  the  head  ot  the  state. 
In  the  previous  year,  after  the  Irish 
campaign,  he  had  been  appointed  Captain- 
General  and  Commander-in-Chief  of  all  the 
forces  of  the  Commonwealth,  and  as  such  he 
overtopped  every  other  existing  functionary  of 
government  in  official  rank.  This  cast  upon 
him,  almost  necessarily,  and  without  presump- 
tuousness  on  his  own  part,  the  responsible  in- 


CROMWELL  141 

itiative  of  action  in  all  that  was  subsequently 
done.  The  fact  is  one  to  be  borne  in  mind. 
It  is  true  that  his  chieftainship  was  commis- 
sioned more  validly  by  the  qualities  of  force 
and  courage  which  made  him  a  born  leader  of 
men ;  but  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  he  ever 
acted  on  that  authority  alone.  Undoubtedly 
his  influence  over  parliament  and  in  the  coun- 
cil of  state,  during  the  last  year  and  a  half  of 
the  Commonwealth,  was  very  great,  but  not 
to  a  controlling  degree.  He  opposed,  for  ex- 
ample, the  opening  of  war  with  the  Dutch,  re- 
garded it  always  with  impatience,  and  ended 
it  as  soon  as  he  had  power.  It  is  most  prob- 
able, but  not  certain,  that  he  strove  to  broaden 
the  bases  on  which  a  measure  of  religious 
freedom  was  established,  and  could  not  suc- 
ceed. 

On  one  question  he  did  take  the  peremptory 
and  decisive  lead ;  and  that  concerned  the  dis- 
solution of  the  Rump  and  the  election  of  a 
^^new  representative"  to  take  its  place.  For 
months  that  worn-out  remnant  of  the  Long 
Parliament  had  dalHed  exasperatingly  with  de- 
mands from  the  army  and  the  public,  that  it 
provide  for  some  kind  of  a  new  election,  and 
dissolve  itself.  Nobody  in  the  dominant  party 


142     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

thought  of  venturing  a  free  election  ;  but  the 
hope  was  entertained  that  judicious  restric- 
tions of  the  suffrage  might  bring  forth  a  par- 
liament that  would  be  true  to  the  Common- 
wealth, while  commanding  a  fair  measure  of 
respect.  This  did  not  accord  with  the  views  of 
the  gentlemen  of  the  Rump,  who  proposed  an 
election  for  no  more  than  the  filling  of  vacant 
seats.  Cromwell  tried  to  reconcile  the  dis- 
agreement by  a  meeting  of  leaders  on  the  two 
sides  of  the  question  at  his  rooms.  They  parted 
with  the  understanding  that  they  would  meet 
again,  and  that  nothing  should  be  done  mean- 
time with  the  pending  elections  bill.  Next 
morning,  however,  Cromwell  learned  that  a 
quorum  of  parliament  had  assembled  very  early 
and  was  pushing  the  bill  through.  Thereupon 
he  hastened  in  wrath  to  the  house,  with  a 
guard  of  soldiers  following,  and  after  a  speech 
of  violent  denunciation,  called  his  musketeers 
in  and  ordered  the  chamber  to  be  cleared.  As 
the  members  passed  out  he  cried  to  them :  "  It 
is  you  that  have  forced  me  to  this,  for  I  have 
sought  the  Lord  night  and  day  that  He  would 
rather  slay  me  than  put  me  on  the  doing  of 
this  work." 

The  expulsion  of  the  Rump  was  followed 


CROMWELL  143 

by  the  dissolution  of  the  council  of  state,  and 
no  governing  authority  remained  but  that  — 
purely  military — of  "the  Captain-  holis- 
General  and  Commander-in-Chief  of  R^^p^^. 
the  Forces  of  the  Commonwealth."  ^"^^^ 
He  protested,  with  evident  sincerity,  that  it 
was  repugnant  to  him,  and  he  attempted  to  re- 
constitute a  civil  government  for  the  nation  in 
a  strange  way.  Instead  of  instituting  a  new 
parliament  by  even  a  limited  election,  he  sum- 
moned a  select  body  of  one  hundred  and  forty 
"  persons  fearing  God,"  chosen  partly  by  him- 
self and  a  council  of  officers,  but  nominated  in 
large  part  by  the  Congregational  churches  of 
the  country.  These  were  to  take  upon  them- 
selves "  the  great  charge  and  trust "  of  pro- 
viding for  "  the  peace,  safety  and  good  govern- 
ment" of  the  Commonwealth.  Their  assembly 
was  an  experiment  on  the  theory  of  the  so- 
called  Fifth  Monarchy  Men  of  the  time,  who 
claimed  that  the  day  had  come  for  the  setting 
up  of  the  Kingdom  of  Jesus  and  the  reign  of 
the  saints  —  the  fifth  and  last  of  the  great 
monarchies  of  the  world.  Cromwell  had  re- 
jected their  doctrine,  and  yet  he  yielded  to 
them  in  this  critical  experiment,  —  which 
failed.    The  assembly  of  God-fearing  men 


144     A  STUDY   OF   GREATNESS   IN   MEN 

proved  utterly  without  knowledge  for  the  work 
which  it  did  not  hesitate  to  undertake,  and  its 
speaker  did  the  nation  a  good  service  when  he 
ended  its  session  abruptly,  in  an  arbitrary  way 
(December  10,  1653). 

Thus  absolute  power  returned  to  Cromwell 
again.  And  now  he  accepted  from  his  council 
B„,--  —      of  officers  a  written  constitution  which 

Rules  as 

LordProtec-  lia(j  \)qqjx  under  discussion  for  some 

torolthe  i  mi  •        i  mi        x 

Common-  mouths.  This,  kuown  as  "  The  In- 
strument of  Government,"  placed 
"  the  chief  magistracy  and  the  administration  " 
in  a  person  to  be  styled  "Lord  Protector  of 
the  Commonwealth  of  England,  Scotland  and 
Ireland,"  and  it  provided  for  the  summoning 
of  a  parliament  (of  one  house)  in  which  the 
three  countries  should  be  represented.  The 
powers  of  the  Lord  Protector  were  limited  not 
only  by  those  of  parliament,  but  by  the  func- 
tions of  a  council,  which  he  was  not  free  in 
choosing,  but  whose  advice  in  most  matters  he 
was  required  to  take.  "  Oliver  Cromwell,  Cap- 
tain-General," was  named  in  the  Instrument  as 
Lord  Protector  "for  his  life";  his  successors 
to  be  chosen  by  the  council. 

A  parliament  elected,  as  prescribed  in  the 
Instrument,  by  persons  who  had  not  "aided, 


CROMWELL  145 

advised,  assisted  or  abetted  in  any  war  against 
the  parliament  since  the  first  day  of  January, 
1641,"  came  together  on  the  3d  of  Septem- 
ber, 1654,  and  gave  trouble  to  the  new  gov- 
ernment before  the  end  of  a  week.  There 
appeared  to  be  a  republican  majority,  which 
began  at  once  to  question  the  very  Instrument 
under  which  it  was  convened,  proposing  to 
discuss  "whether  the  house  should  approve 
of  government  by  a  single  person  and  parlia- 
ment." Cromwell  put  a  sharp  check  on  this 
movement,  by  requiring  the  members  to  sign 
a  pledge  "  not  to  alter  the  government  as 
settled  in  a  single  person  and  a  parliament." 
Those  who  would  not  sign  were  dismissed. 
Those  who  did  sign  kept  an  attitude  of  hos- 
tility to  the  Protector,  and  he  dissolved  the 
parliament  as  soon  as  the  Instrument  gave 
him  authority  to  do  so  (January  22,  1655). 

Then  followed  a  period  of  really  absolute 
military  rule,  exercised,  not  by  the  Protector 
alone,  but  by  the  Protector  and  his  council, 
which  seems  to  have  shared  authority  with 
him  to  the  full  extent  prescribed  in  the  Instru- 
ment of  Government.  Otherwise,  that  consti- 
tutional document  had  little  force.  In  this 
period  of  twenty  months  the  government  had 


146     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

to  deal  with  many  conspiracies,  insurrections, 
and  hostile  combinations,  not  only  of  Cava- 
liers, but  of  Levellers,  Fifth  Monarchy  Men, 
and  other  factions  into  which  the  old  Puritan 
party  of  the  civil  war  was  now  broken  up. 
Furthermore,  it  had  undertaken  an  energetic 
use,  in  foreign  waters,  of  the  strong  naval 
force  which  Vane,  in  the  late  Commonwealth 
government,  had  organized,  and  which  Blake 
and  Monk  had  made  famous  and  formidable 
in  the  war  with  the  Dutch.  It  had  acted  vigor- 
ously against  the  Barbary  pirates ;  interfered 
with  effect  to  stop  the  massacre  of  Walden- 
sian  Protestants  in  Piedmont;  opened  war 
with  Spain  to  secure  freedom  for  English- 
men from  the  Inquisition,  and  an  entrance  for 
English  shipping  into  the  West  Indian  trade ; 
and  it  had  raised  England  to  a  new  standing 
among  the  European  powers.  For  the  stren- 
uous work  which  these  circumstances  re- 
quired it  used  military  methods  and  military 
force.  It  resorted  to  what  Cromwell  de- 
scribed later  as  "  a  little  poor  invention," 
dividing  England  and  Wales  into  a  dozen  mil- 
itary districts,  each  under  a  major-general, 
whose  duty  was  not  only  to  preserve  order  by 
summary  means,  but  to  exact  one  tenth  of  the 


CROMWELL  147 

unnual  income  of  all  disaffected  persons,  as  an 
arbitrary  tax. 

This  military  government  proved  effective 
enough  in  preserving  public  order,  but  its 
hatef  ulness  to  the  nation  became  so  plain  that 
a  new  parliament  was  summoned  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1656.  The  major-generals  of  the  gov- 
ernment used  all  possible  influence  to  prevent 
the  election  to  it  of  troublesome  men,  and 
yet  nearly  a  hundred  of  the  members  elect 
were  excluded  from  the  house  when  it  met,  on 
various  grounds.  Among  the  early  doings  of 
the  new  parliament  was  the  rejection  of  a  bill 
to  legalize  and  continue  the  authority  of  the 
major-generals.  This  seemed  to  be  an  act  of 
independence ;  but  the  army  found  reason  to 
suspect  that  it  was  prompted  by  Cromwell 
himself.  His  state  of  mind,  his  purposes,  his 
agency  in  occurrences  then  and  after,  are  all 
obscure  and  much  in  dispute.  It  seems  not 
improbable  that  he  tried,  privately,  to  break 
the  government  in  some  degree  from  its  close 
connection  with  the  army,  and  to  obtain  for 
it  a  constitutional  basis  not  derived,  as  the 
Instrument  of  Government  had  been,  from  the 
army  circle.  Therefore,  some  instigation  from 
him  may  have  started  and  stimulated  a  discus- 


148      A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

sion  in  parliament  which  began  in  the  mid- 
winter of  1657  and  went  on  for  four  months, 
resulting  in  the  formulation  and  acceptance  of 
what  was  known  as  "  The  Humble  Petition 
and  Advice." 

Originally  this  instrument  contemplated  a 
change  of  title  in  the  chief  magistrate,  from 
Lord  Protector  to  King.  Those  who  argued 
for  the  royal  title  were  undoubtedly  right  in 
saying  that  it  bore  prerogatives  that  were  in- 
terwoven with  the  whole  body  of  English  law, 
and  that  it  commanded  a  deference  from  the 
mass  of  the  people  which  no  other  title  would 
receive.  It  was  an  argument  that  must  have 
weighed  in  Cromwell's  mind,  and  may  easily 
have  inclined  him  to  the  proffered  crown, 
more  than  personal  ambition  could  have  done. 
The  same  proposal  of  kingship,  on  the  same 
grounds  of  reasoning,  had  been  made  by  the 
framers  of  the  Instrument  of  Government, 
and  then  he  had  put  it  aside.  Now,  it  seems 
certain  that  he  was  prepared  to  accept,  and 
would  have  done  so  if  the  republican  opposi- 
tion in  the  army  had  not  assumed  a  startling 
tone.  As  it  was,  he  declared  finally  and  posi- 
tively :  "  I  cannot  undertake  this  government 
with  the  title  of  king,"  and  was  re-installed 


CROMWELL  149 

with  great  ceremony  as  Lord  Protector  under 
the  new  law  (June  26,  1657).  His  functions 
and  powers,  however,  were  intended  to  be 
substantially  those  of  a  constitutional  king. 
He  was  given  the  right  to  name  his  successor, 
and  the  further  right  to  name  the  life-members 
of  a  body  now  created  by  the  new  constitution, 
to  be  a  substitute  for  the  defunct  House  of 
Lords. 

It  was  this  "  other  house,"  for  which  no  fit- 
ting official  name  could  be  found,  that  brought 
the  new  scheme  of  government  to  speedy 
wreck.  It  seemed  a  travesty  of  the  House  of 
Lords.  Its  powers  were  ill-defined  and  wide- 
opened  to  dispute.  In  selecting  its  members 
the  Protector  had  drawn  away  from  the  com- 
mons his  strongest  supporters,  while  admit- 
ting to  that  body  those  unfriendly  members 
whom  he  had  shut  out  before.  The  result  was 
a  powerful  majority  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons in  deadly  opposition  to  the  government, 
denying  to  the  "  other  house "  any  share  in 
legislation,  and  implacably  determined  to  em- 
barrass the  Protector  by  every  means  in  their 
power.  For  a  single  fortnight,  in  January  and 
the  beginning  of  February,  1658,  the  two 
houses  of   the  reconstructed  parliament  sat 


150     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

and  gave  pitiable  proof  of  a  hopeless  situa« 
tion ;  then  the  Protector  appeared  before  them 
and  pronounced  their  dissolution. 

If  anything  could  daunt  the  soul  of  Crom- 
well, he  must  have  shrunk  with  dread  from  the 
His  Last  prospect  that  confronted  him  then, 
Days.  when  every  attempt  at  government 
by  less  than  sheer  dictatorship  had  failed. 
Happily  for  him,  the  troubles  it  stored  would 
soon  be  for  others  to  bear.  He  had  but  seven 
more  months  of  life.  They  were  months  of 
sore  public  trial,  of  private  affliction,  then  of 
sickness  and  death,  which  came  to  him  on  the 
3d  of  September,  the  anniversary  of  Dunbar 
and  Worcester,  the  two  great  victories  which 
had  closed  his  military  career. 

And,  now,  with  what  feeling  shall  we  think 

of  this  man,  whose  death  gave  an  ignoble 

triumph  to  ignoble  enemies ;  whose 

The  Two  . 

Views  oi  grave  they  violated,  whose  memory 
romwe  .  ^j^^^  blackened  in  history?  Shall  we 
think  of  him  as  they  did,  that  he  was  the 
meanest  of  hypocrites,  the  falsest  of  cunning 
adventurers,  the  most  self-seeking  of  despots? 
or  shall  we  think  with  Carlyle,  who  valued 
him  '^ above  all  other  sorts  of  men"?  I  doubt 
if  any  of  us  can  go  even  nearly  to  either  one 


CROMWELL  151 

or  the  other  extremity  of  these  opposing  views. 
But  here,  if  anywhere  in  history,  is  a  case  that 
calls  for  the  use  of  such  definite  principles  of 
judgment  as  I  have  proposed  to  apply  in  the 
estimating  of  exceptional  men.  Let  me  bring 
them  to  bear,  as  briefly  as  I  can. 

Firstly,  then,  we  have  to  take  account  of 
the  kind  and  quality  of  the  endowments  that 
grave  Cromwell  the  power  to  do  what  „ 

^        .  ^  .  .  Estimate  of 

he  did,  and  then  to  find,  if  possible,  HisEndow- 
—  not  by  guess,  but  by  clear  dis- 
closure, the  motives  that  actuated  and  the 
purposes  that  gave  direction  to  his  course.  As 
to  the  fundamental  sources  of  power  in  him, 
they  are  as  unmistakable  as  in  Napoleon,  or 
in  any  other  of  the  greater  soldiers  and  com- 
manders of  men.  Inexhaustible  springs  of  an 
abnormal  personal  force,  partly  of  the  spirit 
and  partly  of  the  flesh ;  an  unflinching  courage 
and  fortitude  of  the  same  twofold  strength ; 
an  alert,  watchful,  practical  mind,  quick  to 
realize  situations  of  circumstance,  prompt  to 
discern  opportunity,  and  ready  in  fitting  means 
to  ends :  —  bring  these  gifts  of  power  to  an 
adequate  service,  in  an  adequate  field,  and  the 
inevitable  product  is  a  greatly  victorious  sol- 
dier, or  a  greatly  dominant  political  chief,  or 


152     A   STUDY   OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

both.  So  far  there  is  close  likeness  between 
,Cromwell  and  Napoleon ;  so  far  they  are  men 
of  the  same  extraordinary  breed ;  so  far,  too, 
Cromwell  takes  the  lower  rank.  But  that  rank- 
ing is  reversed  when  we  come  to  consider  the 
difference  of  motive  in  the  two  men. 

In  Napoleon  we  found  unmistakable  reve- 
lations of  motive  concentrated,  from  the  be- 
His Motives  ginning  to  the  end  of  his  career,  in 
of  Action.-  ambitions  that  were  selfish,  vulsrar, 

sincerity  ol  .  ?  &      ? 

wsReii-  and  barbaric.  In  Cromwell,  the  rev- 
elation  is  just  as  clear  to  my  mind  or 
motives  that  sprang  purely  and  almost  entirely 
from  the  absoluteness  and  the  fervor  of  his  re- 
ligious beliefs.  It  was  in  the  service  of  the  Lord 
that  he  fought,  and  in  the  service  of  the  Lord 
that  he  took  on  himself  the  heavy  burdens 
of  the  state.  That  conviction  is  borne  in  on  me 
when  I  read  his  letters  and  speeches,  significant 
in  little  and  eloquent  in  nothing  but  the  al- 
ways insisting  desire  to  trace  signs  of  divine 
leading  or  assistance  in  what  he  and  his  soldiers 
and  his  party  have  done.  They  have  the  ring 
of  sincerity;  they  are  not  cant,  as  the  careless 
judgment  of  former  times  pronounced  them. 
The  whole  mind  and  heart  of  the  man  was  in 
the  belief  they  express.    It  was  a  belief  not 


CROMWELL  163 

easy  for  tlie  present  generation  to  understand. 
Generally,  in  the  religious  thought  of  our 
time,  there  is  a  conception  of  the  divine  govern- 
ment of  the  world  which  differs  very  greatly 
from  that  which  Cromwell  and  his  fellow  Pu- 
ritans entertained.  In  their  thought  it  was  not 
so  much  a  government  determined  from  the 
beginning  by  a  divine  wisdom  exercised  in 
fixed  forces  and  laws,  as  it  was  a  government 
conducted  from  hour  to  hour,  and  from  event 
to  event,  by  an  always  watchful  divine  eye  and 
an  always  acting  divine  hand.  In  Cromwell's 
profoundest  belief  God's  relation  to  the  Puri- 
tans of  the  English  conflict  was  identical  with 
His  relation  to  the  Children  of  Israel  in  olden 
time.  Every  Scripture  word  addressed  to  Is- 
rael was  equally  a  message  to  them.  They  were 
His  people.  They  were  upholding  His  cause. 
Their  antagonists  were  His  enemies.  When 
they  pleased  Him  He  gave  them  success,  and 
the  glory  was  His;  it  was  proof  of  His  displea- 
sure if  reverses  or  discouragements  came.  The 
whole  course  of  events  was  a  succession  of 
"providences,"  to  be  studied,  like  a  chart  of 
divine  signals,  for  the  discovery  of  passing 
dispositions  in  the  mind  of  God.  Expressions 
of  this  behef  break  constantly  from  Cromwell, 


154     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN   MEN 

in  every  account  of  his  battles,  in  every  speech 
he  made  to  parliament,  and  in  most  of  his  let- 
ters to  his  friends.  After  the  battle  of  Mars- 
ton  Moor  he  wrote:  "It  had  all  the  evidences 
of  an  absolute  victory  obtained  by  the  Lord*s 
blessing  upon  the  Godly  party  principally.  We 
never  charged  them  but  we  routed  the  enemy. 
.  .  ,  God  made  them  as  stubble  to  our  swords." 
In  reporting  the  capture  of  Bristol  to  the 
speaker  of  parliament  he  wrote :  "  They  that 
have  been  employed  in  this  service  know  that 
faith  and  prayer  obtained  this  city  for  you." 
To  his  mind  the  battle  of  Dunbar  was  an  abso- 
lute and  final  decision,  by  the  judgment  of 
God,  of  questions  between  the  English  Inde- 
pendents and  the  Scottish  Presbyterian  Kirk. 
"The  Lord  hath  heard  us,"  he  declared  to  the 
ministers  of  the  Kirk,  who  had  shut  them- 
selves up,  with  the  garrison,  in  Edinburgh 
Castle,  and  would  not  accept  his  invitation  to 
come  down  to  their  pulpits  and  preach,  —  "  the 
Lord  hath  heard  us,  though  you  would  not, 
upon  as  solemn  an  appeal  as  any  experience 
can  parallel."  They  answered  coldly  that  they 
had  "not  so  learned  Christ  as  to  hang  the 
equity  of  their  cause  upon  events."  This  was 
rank  blasphemy  to  Cromwell,  and  he  cried 


CROMWELL  155 

again  to  the  preachers  in  stern  expostulation : 
^'  Did  not  you  solemnly  appeal  and  pray  ?  Did 
not  we  do  so  too?  And  ought  not  you  and  we 
to  think,  with  fear  and  trembling,  of  the  hand 
of  the  Great  God  in  this  mighty  and  strange 
appearance  of  His,  instead  of  slightly  calling 
it  an  ^ event'?  Were  not  both  your  and  our 
expectations  renewed  from  time  to  time,  whilst 
we  waited  upon  God,  to  see  which  way  He 
would  manifest  Himself  upon  our  appeals? 
And  shall  we,  after  all  these  our  prayers,  fast- 
ings, tears,  expectations  and  solemn  appeals, 
call  these  bare  ^events'  ?  The  Lord  pity  you." 

Even  in  the  horrid  massacre  at  Drogheda, 
which  came  from  a  rare  outbreak  of  barbaric 
battle-rage  in  himself,  he  could  see  a  divine 
purpose,  as  he  wrote,  to  save  in  the  future 
"  much  effusion  of  blood,  through  the  good- 
ness of  God."  As  for  the  slaughter  at  Wex- 
ford, he  laid  the  responsibility  upon  the  Lord 
with  no  reserve.  He  himself,  he  wrote  to 
Speaker  Lenthall,  had  intended  "  better  to  the 
place  than  so  great  a  ruin"  ;  but  "  God  would 
not  have  it  so." 

So,  in  all  the  conflict,  he  was  looking  con- 
tinually for  signs  of  the  immediate,  present 
hand  of  God.  In  all  his  correspondence  he  is 


156     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

forever  stimulating  his  colleagues  and  friends 
to  be  watchful  of  the  wonderful  "provi- 
dences "  of  the  time^  and  to  see  them  as  he  sees 
them,  and  to  take  their  meaning  as  he  does. 
The  providential  influence  that  he  recognizes 
so  unquestioningly,  consults  so  assiduously, 
and  strives  faithfully  to  be  guided  by,  is  not 
only  traced  by  him  in  the  turn  of  battles,  but 
equally  in  the  movements  of  feeling  and  opin- 
ion among  those  whom  he  held  to  be  "  God's 
people.' '  This  appears  very  plainly  in  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  of  his  letters,  written  in 
November,  1648,  when  the  army  had  reached 
the  state  of  mind  which  led  to  "  Pride's  Purge  " 
of  parliament  and  to  the  trial  of  the  king. 
Cromwell  wrote  then  to  his  friend  Colonel 
Kobert  Hammond,  the  commandant  of  Caris- 
brooke  Castle,  who  was  in  grave  doubt  as  to 
the  leading  of  duty,  if  civil  and  military  au- 
thority were  broken  apart.  "  My  dear  friend," 
wrote  Cromwell  to  him,  "let  us  look  into 
providences ;  surely  they  mean  somewhat. 
They  hang  so  together;  have  been  so  con- 
stant, so  clear,  so  unclouded.  .  .  .  What  think 
you  of  Providence  disposing  so  many  of  God's 
people  this  way,  —  especially  in  this  poor 
army  ?  " 


CROMWELL  157 

This  disposition  of  mind  was  not  peculiar 
to  Cromwell ;  it  was  common  in  his  party,  — 
especially  so  in  the  army  of  his  creation  ;  but 
one  can  hardly  doubt  that  much  of  the  deeper 
inspiration  of  it  came  from  him.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  history  of  the  time  more  sig- 
nificant or  more  interesting  than  the  account 
of  an  extraordinary  prayer-meeting  held  by 
the  army  leaders  at  Windsor,  early  in  the 
year  1648.  This  was  a  little  before  the  out- 
breaking of  what  is  called  the  Second  Civil 
War,  when  a  Scottish  army  crossed  the  border 
to  assist  royalist  risings  in  England  and  Wales. 
The  captive  king  Charles  had  been  the  centre 
of  parley ings  and  intrigues  through  all  the 
year  past ;  parliament  and  army  had  been 
drifting  into  antagonism,  more  and  more  ;  the 
distractions  of  the  situation  increased  from 
day  to  day.  Thereupon  a  considerable  body 
of  leading  .officers  in  the  army  agreed  to  meet 
at  Windsor  Castle  for  a  season  of  prayer,  and 
for  inquiry  into  the  causes  of  what  they  de- 
scribed to  themselves  as  "  that  sad  dispensa- 
tion." One  of  the  officers  who  took  part,  Ad- 
jutant Allen  by  name,  wrote  the  story  of  that 
prayer-meeting  with  great  earnestness  of  faith, 
and  it  is  found  among  the  Somers  Tracts. 


158     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

On  the  second  morning  of  the  meeting,  as 
Allen  tells  us,  "  many  spake  from  the  Word 
and  prayed;  and  the  then  Lieutenant-General 
Cromwell  did  press  very  earnestly  on  all  there 
present  to  a  thorough  consideration  of  our 
actions  as  an  army,  and  of  our  ways  particu- 
larly as  private  Christians ;  to  see  if  any  ini- 
quity could  be  found  in  them,  and  what  it 
was,  that  if  possible  we  might  find  it  out,  and 
so  remove  the  cause  of  such  sad  rebukes  as 
were  upon  us  (by  reason  of  our  iniquities  as 
we  judged)  at  that  time.  And  the  way  more 
particularly  the  Lord  led  us  to  herein  was 
this  :  To  look  back  and  consider  what  time  it 
was  when,  with  joint  satisfaction,  we  could 
last  say,  to  the  best  of  our  judgment,  the 
presence  of  the  Lord  was  amongst  us,  and 
rebukes  and  judgments  were  not  as  then  upon 
us.  Which  time  the  Lord  led  us  jointly  to 
find  out  and  agree  in ;  and  having  done  so 
to  proceed,  as  we  then  judged  it  our  duty,  to 
search  into  all  our  public  actions  as  an  army 
afterwards ;  duly  weighing  (as  the  Lord  helped 
us)  each  of  them,  with  their  grounds,  rules 
and  ends,  as  near  as  we  could.  ...  By  which 
means  we  were,  by  a  gracious  hand  of  the 
Lord,  led  to  find  out  the  very  steps  (as  we 


CROMWELL  159 

were  all  then  jointly  convinced)  by  which  we 
had  departed  from  the  Lord  and  provoked 
Him  to  depart  from  us.  Which  we  found  to 
be  those  cursed  carnal  conferences  [which] 
our  own  conceited  wisdom,  our  fears  and  want 
of  faith,  had  prompted  us,  the  year  before,  to 
entertain  with  the  king  and  his  party.  .  .  . 
Presently  we  were  led  and  helped  to  a  clear 
agreement  amongst  ourselves,  not  any  dissent- 
ing, that  it  was  the  duty  of  our  day,  with  the 
forces  we  had,  to  go  out  and  fight  against 
those  potent  enemies  [namely,  Scotch,  Irish 
and  English  allies  of  King  Charles]  which 
that  year,  in  all  places,  appeared  against  us. 
.  .  .  And  we  were  also  enabled  then,  after 
serious  seeking  His  face,  to  come  to  a  very 
clear  and  joint  resolution,"  —  which  was  to 
the  effect  that,  after  dealing  with  the  royalist 
rebellions  of  that  year,  it  would  be  their  duty 
"to  call  Charles  Stuart,  that  man  of  blood,*' 
to  an  account. 

Now,  the  attitude  of  mind  which  this  dis- 
closes is  unquestionably  one  that  would  greatly 
intensify  a  man's  convictions  when  weafaiess 
formed,  by  ascribing  them  practically  ^i^udg-^" 
to  sources  of  divine  inspiration ;  but  ^^^^ 
it  would  do  so  by  putting  its  own  reasoning 


160     A  STUDY   OF  GREATNESS   IN   MEN 

faculties  very  much  out  of  use.  A  religious 
believer  of  Cromweirs  Puritan  school  could 
uot  at  the  same  time  be  a  political  thinker,  in 
the  deeper  sense ;  could  not  interpret  events 
by  inherent  meanings  to  be  found  in  them- 
selves ;  could  not  bring  to  bear  on  them 
those  fundamental  principles  of  political  judg- 
ment that  are  drawn  from  historical  experi- 
ence. That  Cromwell  was  no  political  thinker 
is  very  plain ;  and  it  seems  to  be  equally  plain 
that  his  political  instincts  were  exceedingly 
weak.  Neither  in  reasoning  faculties  nor  in  in- 
tuitions nor  in  knowledge  was  he  well  equipped 
for  dealing  with  the  tremendous  political  prob- 
lems which  a  revolution  to  the  very  bottom  of 
things  in  England  had  cast  upon  him.  He  did 
not  try  to  deal  with  them  by  any  handHng  of 
his  own  ;  he  simply  trusted  them  to  the  Lord. 
Since  Moses,  at  least,  there  is  no  other  exam- 
ple in  history  of  a  man  so  strong  who  gave 
himself  so  unreservedly  to  be  a  willing  instru- 
ment in  God's  hands  for  the  carrying  out  of 
God's  designs. 

The  old  notion  of  Cromwell,  that  he  was 
an  eagerly,  cunningly,  overpoweringly  ambi- 
tious man,  who  planned  and  forced  the  com- 
binations of  circumstance   which   gave  him 


CROMWELL  161 

opportunities  to  climb  to  a  dictatorship,  was 
totally  wrong.    Everything  indicates  that  he  \ 
had  really  a  small  share  of  the  per- 

,  .  .  ,       1      1      1   p         •       He  was  not 

sonal  ambition  to  be  looked  for  m   seitseewng 

1  iini  1  1       p    1    ^  Ambition. 

one  who  could  reel  such  mastertul 
forces  in  himself.  I  doubt  if  anybody  can 
read  with  care  and  candor  his  remarkable  sec- 
ond speech  to  the  first  elected  parliament  of 
his  Protectorate,  in  which  he  reviewed  his 
own  career,  without  recognizing  that  it  is  an 
honest,  truthful  outpouring  from  the  heart.  ' 
He  was  rehearsing  the  story  of  past  events, 
in  his  own  relation  to  them,  to  show  that  he 
had  not  raised  himself,  nor  sought  to  raise 
himself,  to  the  position  of  authority  in  which 
he  stood.  '*  After  Worcester  Fight,"  he  said, 
"  I  came  up  to  London  to  pay  my  service  and 
duty  to  the  parliament  which  then  sat,  hoping 
that  all  minds  would  have  been  disposed  to 
answer  what  seemed  to  be  the  mind  of  God, 
namely,  to  give  peace  and  rest  to  His  people. 
...  I  hoped  to  have  had  leave  to  retire  to 
a  private  life.  I  begged  to  be  dismissed  of  my 
charge;  I  begged  it  again  and  again;  and 
God  be  judge  between  me  and  all  men  if  I  lie 
in  this  matter."  Then  he  proceeded  to  relate 
the  dispersion  of  the  Kump  and  other  occur- 


162     A  STUDY   OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

rences,  down  to  the  calling  of  the  assembly  of 
"God-fearing  men,"  sometimes  styled  the 
"Little  Parliament,"  and  of  this  he  said:  "As 
a  principal  end  in  calling  that  assembly  was 
the  settlement  of  the  nation,  so  a  chief  end  to 
myself  was  to  lay  down  the  power  which  was 
in  my  hands.  I  say  to  you  again,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  that  God  who  hath  blessed  and  been 
with  me,  in  all  my  adversities  and  successes  — 
that  was,  as  to  myself,  my  greatest  end.  A 
desire  perhaps,  I  am  afraid,  sinful  enough,  to 
be  quit  of  the  power  God  had  most  clearly  by 
His  providence  put  into  my  hands,  before  He 
called  me  to  lay  it  down." 

Coming  then  to  the  framing  of  the  Instru- 
ment of  Government  and  the  institution  of 
the  Protectorate,  he  gave  this  account  of  that 
procedure:  "The  gentlemen  that  undertook 
to  frame  this  government  did  consult  divers 
days  together  (men  of  known  integrity  and 
ability),  how  to  frame  somewhat  that  might 
give  us  settlement.  They  did  consult;  and 
that  I  was  not  privy  to  their  councils  they 
know  it.  When  they  had  finished  their  model 
in  some  measure,  or  made  a  good  preparation 
of  it,  they  became  communicative.  They  told 
me  that  except  I  would  undertake  the  govern- 


CROMWELL  163 

inent  they  thought  things  would  hardly  come 
ko  a  composure  or  settlement,  but  blood  and 
confusion  would  break  in  upon  us.  I  refused 
it  again  and  again;  not  complimentingly, — 
as  they  know^,  and  as  God  knows.  I  confess, 
after  many  arguments,  they  urging  on  me  that 
I  did  not  hereby  receive  anything  which  put 
me  into  a  higher  capacity  than  before,  but 
that  it  limited  me,  —  that  it  bound  my  hands 
to  act  nothing  without  the  consent  of  a  coun- 
cil, until  the  parliament,  and  then  limited  by 
the  parliament,  as  the  act  of  government  ex- 
presseth, — I  did  consent." 

He  ends  the  review  by  saying :  "  This  is  a 
narrative  that  discovers  to  you  the  series  of 
providences  and  transactions  leading  me  into 
the  condition  wherein  I  now  stand.  ...  I 
brought  not  myself  into  this  condition :  surely 
in  my  own  apprehension  I  did  not!  And 
whether  I  did  not,  the  things  being  true  which 
I  have  told  you,  I  submit  to  your  judgment. 
And  there  I  shall  leave  it.  Let  God  do  what 
he  pleaseth." 

Now  this,  to  me,  is  a  perfectly  true  repre- 
sentation of  the  facts  of  CromwelFs  rise  to 
positions  where  power  came  to  him,  was  thrust 
upon  him,  and  was  accepted  by  him,  simply 


164      A   STUDY   OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

because  he  was  the  one  man  strong  enough 
to  exercise  it,  —  strong  enough  to  take  the 
Power  came  awful  burden  of  a  revolution  upon 
l^TotMs  liimself .  He  brought  not  himself  into 
strengti.  i\^q  conditions  in  which  he  stood.  He 
accepted  them  as  from  God,  —  as  burdens  of 
duty,  divinely  imposed.  Essentially,  I  would 
call  him  a  modest  man,  in  the  true  sense  of 
the  term.  He  knew  his  own  strength  and 
shrank  from  no  test  of  it ;  but  I  cannot  dis- 
cover a  trace  of  egotism  in  anything  that  he 
said  or  did.  I  believe  that  he  did  actually  take 
the  very  simple  view  of  himself  that  he  ex- 
pressed in  one  of  his  later  speeches,  on  the 
question  of  converting  the  Protectorate  into 
kingship.  "So  far  as  I  can,"  he  then  said, 
"  I  am  ready  to  serve,  not  as  a  king,  but  as 
a  constable.  For  truly  I  have,  as  before  God, 
often  thought  that  I  could  not  tell  what  my 
business  was,  nor  what  I  was  in  the  place  I 
stood  in,  save  comparing  myself  to  a  good 
constable,  set  to  keep  the  peace  of  the  parish." 
There  could  not  be  a  more  simply  yet  subtly 
true  description  of  Cromwell's  function  as 
Lord  Protector  of  England,  Scotland  and  Ire- 
land. He  was  the  "good  constable"  of  the 
three  nations,  fearless,  faithful,  vigilant,  ready 


CROMWELL  165 

in  resource,  powerful  in  action,  and  he  kept  the 
peace  of  his  three  great  parishes  as  no  other 
could  have  done.  But  not  much  that  msrau- 
touches  statesmanship  is  expected  ^ateSaan- 
from  the  constable.  He  deals  with  s^'- 
things  as  he  finds  them  under  his  hand;  and 
so  Cromwell  did.  The  constable  acts  mostly 
upon  orders  from  some  higher  mind;  and 
Cromwell  sought  always  for  orders  from  the 
great  Judge  of  all  the  earth,  whose  "provi- 
dences" he  watched  unceasingly  for  signs  and 
tokens  of  t^ie  divine  will,  and  to  whom  he 
went  continually  in  prayer. 

When  death  surprised  him  in  the  midst  of 
his  constableship,  it  is  evident  that  he  had  re- 
ceived no  enlightenment,  from  the  source  to 
which  he  looked  for  it,  as  to  what  should  be 
done  with  his  power.  He  was  to  name  his  suc- 
cessor, and  none  had  been  named.  It  was  sur- 
mised or  assumed  that,  in  his  last  moments,  he 
had  indicated  Richard  Cromwell,  his  eldest 
living  son ;  but  there  appears  to  have  been  no 
certainty  of  the  fact.  If  a  fact,  then  the  dying 
Protector  can  have  exercised  no  reasonable 
judgment  in  the  choice.  He  knew  the  inca- 
pacity of  this  son.  He  refers  to  him  often  in 
his  letters  with  fond  rebuke  and  reproach  for 


166     A  STUDY   OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

the  idleness,  the  love  of  pleasure,  the  extrava* 
gance,  which  were  evident  characteristics  of 
the  young  man.  While  Henry  Cromwell,  the 
younger  son,  was  an  able  and  important  actor 
in  public  life  during  his  father's  rule,  —  even 
lord-deputy  and  lord-lieutenant  in  Ireland  for 
four  years,  —  Richard  Cromwell  took  no  part 
in  the  great  affairs  of  the  time.  Yet  the  Pro- 
tector either  made  no  provision  for  the  suc- 
cession to  himself,  or  else  named  the  frivolous 
idler,  Richard  Cromwell,  to  be  a  figure-head 
in  the  vacant  seat,  till  the  nation  should  thrust 
him  out  and  bring  the  Stuarts  back  to  a  re- 
stored throne.  In  any  career  but  Cromwell's 
there  could  be  no  explanation  of  so  empty  a 
conclusion.  In  his  case  we  can  feel  sure  that 
he  had  waited  for  divine  leadings  as  to  the 
final  disposition  to  be  made  of  the  trust  in 
his  hands,  and  they  did  not  come  to  him.  I 
do  not  know  that  it  was  in  the  power  of  any 
statesmanship  to  avert  the  results  that  fol- 
lowed Cromwell's  death ;  but,  if  there  was,  I 
think  it  plain  that  Cromwell  was  not  the  man 
to  discover  them. 

Was  he,  then,  a  great  man?  I  say  yes. 
Great  in  personal  force ;  great  in  the  perfect 
fitting  and  powerful  use  of  practical  means  to 


CROMWELL  167 

practical  ends ;  and  great  above  all  in  the  grand- 
est moral  qualities  that  can  exalt  a  man :  in 
sincerity ;  in  earnestness ;  in  faithful-  inteuectu- 
ness ;  in  uprightness  and  downright-  Jjete^'us 
ness  of  spirit;  in  fearlessness  to  do  ^wa^ess. 
and  fortitude  to  endure.  Intellectually,  I 
do  not  see  him  to  have  been  a  remarkable 
man,  in  any  degree;  and  those  powers  that 
we  call  intellectual  are  large  factors,  neces- 
sarily, in  our  estimate  of  men.  And  so  Crom- 
well realizes  my  conception  of  greatness  in- 
completely, and  I  would  not  rank  him  among 
the  greatest  of  men. 


IV 

WASHINGTON:  IMPRESSIVE  IN 

GREATNESS 


IV 

WASHINGTON:  IMPRESSIVE  IN  GREATNESS 

I  TAKE  it  to  be  the  settled  judgment  of  the 
world  that  Washington  was  an  eminent  sol- 
dier and  an  eminent  statesman,  but  not  of  the 
superlative  order  in  either  class;  and,  yet, 
that  his  place  in  history  is  with  the  supremely 
great  men  of  all  time.  This  implies  values  not 
shown  on  the  surface  of  his  life.  What  are 
they  ?  The  purpose  of  my  present  study  is  to 
bring  them  to  light. 

Great  character  is  a  growth,  an  evolution, 
a  self-completion,  and  we  need  not  look  for 
more  of  it  in  the  youth  of  Washing-  g^iy 
ton  than  the  courage,  the  resolution,  ^®"*' 
the  self-reliance  that  are  necessary  bases  of  all 
personal  strength.  Those  fundamentals  are 
plain  enough  in  the  young  Virginian  who 
surveyed  the  Shenandoah  Valley  for  Lord 
Fairfax  in  his  seventeenth  year;  who  bore 
the  warning  of  Virginia  five  years  later  to 
French  intruders  in  the  Alleghany  wilderness, 
and  then  led  ao^ainst  them  the  little  force  which 
opened  the  final,  decisive  contest  of  Great 


172     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

Britain  Vith  France  for  supremacy  in  the  New 
World.  They  are  plainer  still,  perhaps,  in  the 
Washington  of  Braddock's  staff,  and  of  the 
subsequent  campaigns  in  which  he  commanded 
the  Virginia  troops.  Nevertheless,  those  gal- 
lant and  adventurous  services  might,  in  many 
a  spirited  young  man,  have  preluded  a  quite 
commonplace  career;  and  no  greater  career 
seemed  opening  to  Washington  in  the  next 
seventeen  uneventful,  happy  years  of  his  life. 
We  can  find,  however,  some  tokens  of  the 
making  of  the  future  "  Father  of  his  Country  " 
in  the  simple  journals  and  letters  which  give 
us  his  own  record  of  those  years. 

By  inheritance  from  his  elder  brother,  as 
well  as  from  his  father,  he  possessed  a  great 
Thevir-  estate,  and  his  marriage  had  brought 
S^iw"'  *^  ^^^  *^®  IsLTge  wealth  of  his  wife. 
1776.  Other  estates,  large  and  small,  were 
in  his  keeping,  as  guardian  or  trustee.  He  was 
full  of  labors  and  business  cares,  and  we  can 
see  that  he  was  exercising  in  them  that  vigi- 
lance of  eye  and  mind,  that  study  and  fore- 
thought, that  faithful  patience,  that  well-doing 
of  all  things,  that  went  afterwards  into  the 
conduct  of  the  War  of  American  Independ- 
ence. But  the  more  significant  indication  of 


WASHINGTON  173 

the  man  at  this  period  of  his  prime  is  in  the 
political  feeling  that  he  shows,  —  the  care  for 
public  interests  and  rights.  Why  should  this 
country  gentleman  of  large  wealth,  busy  far- 
mer of  his  own  broad  acres,  exercising  a  lux- 
urious hospitality,  and  living  in  all  ways  as  an 
English  gentleman  of  like  fortune  would  live, 
—  why  should  he  concern  himself  much  with 
questions  between  the  colonies  and  the  British 
parliament  and  King  George  ?  What  harm  to 
him  could  the  Stamp  Act  do,  compared  with 
any  serious  political  disturbance  of  his  pros- 
perous and  happy  life?  Why  should  he  not 
have  been  a  contented,  indifferent  Tory,  like 
so  many  of  his  comfortable  class?  Why? 
Because  it  was  not  in  the  nature  of  the  man 
to  be  indifferent  to  questions  of  right  and 
wrong,  whether  they  touched  himself  little  or 
much. 

Nobody  in  Virginia  had  been  reared  and 
had  lived  under  more  of  English  influences 
than  he ;  yet  nobody  was  quicker  than  he  to 
resent  the  English  encroachments  on  colonial 
rights  that  began  to  thicken  in  the  early  years 
oi  the  third  George's  reign.  Nobody  had 
more  enjoyment  of  the  luxuries  of  living  which 
came  in  those  days  to  the  colonies  from  Eng- 


174     A   STUDY   OF   GREATNESS   IN   MEN 

land ;  yet  none  were  more  ready  than  he  to 
forego  them,  as  a  means  of  making  English- 
men understand  the  importance  of  a  friendly 
harmony  between  their  colonies  and  them- 
selves. He  gave  early  warning  to  his  English 
friends  of  the  non-importation  agreements  that 
were  planned.  Writing  to  a  London  relative 
of  his  wife,  in  September,  1765,  he  bade  him 
remember  "that  our  whole  substance  does 
already,  in  a  manner,  flow  into  Great  Britain, 
and  that  whatsoever  contributes  to  lessen  our 
importations  must  be  hurtful  to  their  manu- 
factures. And,"  he  continues,  "  the  eyes  of  our 
people,  already  beginning  to  open,  will  per- 
ceive that  many  luxuries  which  we  lavish  our 
substance  in  Great  Britain  for  can  be  dis- 
pensed with,  whilst  the  necessaries  of  life  are 
(mostly)  to  be  had  within  ourselves." 

Non-importation  did  its  work  for  the  time 
being  and  won  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act ; 
but  the  right  of  parliament  to  lay  taxes  on 
the  unrepre3ented  subjects  of  the  king  in 
America  was  asserted  and  exercised  still ;  and 
it  is  doubtful  if  the  temper  of  even  Sam 
Adams  was  hardened  much  more  than  that 
of  Washington  by  the  provocative  measures  of 
the  next  three  years.  He  took  the  lead  then, 


WASHINGTON  175 

as  a  member  of  the  Virginia  House  of  Bur- 
gesses, in  measures  to  organize  a  more  sys- 
tematic and  universal  abstention  from  the  use 
of  British  goods,  and  he  was  already  prepared, 
moreover,  for  resistance  in  a  sterner  way.  We 
find  him  writing  bitterly  to  George  Mason,  on 
the  5th  of  April,  1769 :  "  At  a  time  when 
our  lordly  masters  in  Great  Britain  will  be 
satisfied  with  nothing  less  than  the  depriva- 
tion of  American  freedom,  it  seems  highly 
necessary  that  something  should  be  done  to 
avert  the  stroke  and  maintain  the  liberty 
which  we  have  derived  from  our  ancestors. 
.  .  .  That  no  man  should  scruple  or  hesitate 
a  moment  to  use  arms  in  defense  of  so  valu- 
able a  blessing,  on  which  all  the  good  and 
evil  of  life  depends,  is  clearly  my  opinion. 
Yet  arms,  I  would  beg  leave  to  add,  should 
be  the  last  resource,  the  dernier  ressort  Ad- 
dresses to  the  throne  and  remonstrances  to 
parliament  we  have  already,  it  is  said,  proved 
the  inefficacy  of.  How  far,  then,  their  atten- 
tion to  our  rights  and  privileges  is  to  be  awak- 
ened or  alarmed  by  starving  their  trade  and 
manufactures  remains  to  be  seen." 

The  renewed  experiment  of  "boycotting" 
British  goods,   as  we  should  describe  it  in 


176     A  STUDY  OF   GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

our  day,  was  especially  Washington's ;  for  he 
drafted  the  Virginia  resolutions,  which  had  so 
great  an  effect  in  all  the  colonies  that  British 
exports  in  1769  were  cut  down  to  a  small 
fraction  of  what  they  had  been  the  year  be- 
fore. Again  the  patriotic  abstinence  of  the 
colonists  wrung  concessions,  not  to  them,  but 
to  wailing  merchants  and  manufacturers  in 
British  towns.  Again  there  was  a  repeal  of 
obnoxious  acts,  and  again  the  sting  of  wrong 
in  the  acts  was  left  to  fester  in  the  wound 
they  had  made,  by  an  obstinate  persistence  in 
the  taxing  of  tea.  More  than  tempests  in  tea- 
pots came  out  of  this  brew,  as  we  know, 
breaking  at  last  into  the  storm  of  war,  which 
Washington  had  expected  and  was  ready  to 
face. 

The  heavy  hand  of  royal  vengeance  laid  on 
Boston,  for  its  rude  action  in  the  matter  of 
the  tea,  moved  him  to  that  speech  in  the  Vir- 
ginia House  of  Burgesses  which  John  Adams 
described  as  the  most  eloquent  that  was  made : 
"I  will  raise  a  thousand  men,'*  he  said,  "en- 
list them  at  my  own  expense,  and  march,  my- 
self at  their  head,  for  the  relief  of  Boston." 
Writing  a  few  days  later  to  his  friend  Bryan 
Fairfax,  he  explained  the  feeling  which  urged 


WASHINGTON  177 

him  to  so  positive  a  course  :  "  An  innate  spirit 
of  freedom  first  told  me,"  he  said,  "  that  the 
measures  which  administration  hath  for  some 
time  heen  and  are  now  most  violently  pursu- 
ing are  repugnant  to  every  principle  of  natu- 
ral justice ;  whilst  much  abler  heads  than  my 
own  hath  fully  convinced  me  that  it  is  not 
only  repugnant  to  natural  right,  but  subver- 
sive of  the  laws  and  constitution  of  Great 
Britain  itself."  He  dreads  the  struggle  that 
he  sees  opening.  "I  could  wish,"  he  says, 
"  that  the  dispute  had  been  left  to  posterity 
to  determine;  but  the  crisis  is  arrived  when 
we  must  assert  our  rights,  or  submit  to  every 
imposition  that  can  be  heaped  upon  us,  till 
custom  and  use  shall  make  us  as  tame  and 
abject  slaves  as  the  blacks  we  rule  over." 

It  was  in  this  spirit  that  he  went,  the  next 
week,  to  the  meeting  at  Philadelphia  of  the 
first  Continental  Congress,  and,  though  he 
took  little  part  publicly  in  its  proceedings,  the 
impression  that  he  made  may  be  gathered 
from  a  remark  that  is  attributed  to  Patrick 
Henry,  who  was  one  of  his  colleagues  in  the 
Virginia  delegation:  "Mr.  Henry,"  says 
Wirt,  his  first  biographer,  "  on  his  return 
from  the  Continental  Congress,  being  asked, 


178     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

^Who  is  the  greatest  man  in  the  Congress?' 
replied,  'If  you  speak  of  eloquence,  Mr.  Rut- 
ledge,  of  South  Carolina,  is  by  far  the  great- 
est orator;  but  if  you  speak  of  solid  informa- 
tion and  sound  judgment,  Colonel  Washington 
is  unquestionably  the  greatest  man  on  that 
floor.' "  ^  Having  that  weight  in  the  Congress, 
we  may  be  sure  that  his  counsels  are  repre- 
sented in  the  quietly  resolute  but  pacific  action 
that  it  took ;  for  he  would  not  hasten  what  he 
knew  must  come.  But  when  he  went  to  the 
second  Congress,  in  the  following  spring,  he 
wore  his  uniform  as  a  colonel  of  the  Virginia 
militia,  to  signify  that  he  came  as  a  soldier, 
ready  for  the  task  of  the  sword.  Nearly  a 
month  before  the  Lexington  and  Concord 
fighting  occurred,  he  had  written  to  his 
brother,  John  Augustine:  "It  is  my  full  in- 
tention to  devote  my  life  and  fortune  in  the 
cause  we  are  engaged  in,  if  needful." 

When  the  second  Congress  came  together, 
it  had  no  longer  an  open  question  to  deal  with, 
Commander-  between  war  and  peace.  It  accepted 
theconu-  the  statc  of  war  in  New  England, 
nentaiArmy.  jjjg^jg   the    cause   of    Massachusetts 

1  Wirt,  p.  132.  (See,  also,  note  in  Zt/e,  Correspandence  and 
Speeches  of  Patrick  Henry,  vol.  i,  p.  247.) 


WASHINGTON  179 

the  cause  of  all,  adopted  the  forces  in  arms 
as  a  ^^continental  army/'  and  named  of- 
ficers to  the  command.  In  later  years,  when 
most  of  the  better  men  of  the  Congress  had 
been  drawn  away  to  other  public  duties,  there 
was  no  act  of  unwisdom  that  this  body  could 
not  commit ;  it  might  even  have  gratified  the 
ambitious  vanity  of  John  Hancock  and  made 
him  commander-in-chief ;  but  in  those  early 
days  the  counsels  of  good  sense  could  prevail, 
and  Congress  gave  obedience  to  the  plain  rea- 
sons, of  personal  fitness  and  public  policy, 
which  pointed  to  Washington  as  the  prefer- 
able man  for  the  place. 

That  he  was,  indeed,  the  one  man  for  it 
of  all  living  men,  and,  we  might  say,  of 
all  conceivable  men,  was  more  than  could  be 
known  in  that  day,  as  we  know  it  now. 
Looking  backward,  we  can  see  that  the  fate 
of  the  undertaking  of  rebellious  war  hung 
absolutely  upon  his  acceptance  of  the  of- 
fered command.  How  modestly,  and  with  what 
a  generous  giving  of  himself  to  the  coun- 
try he  took  the  great  burden  of  duty,  we 
all  remember:  "Lest  some  unlucky  event 
should  happen  unfavorably  to  my  reputation," 
he  said  to  the  Congress,  "  I  beg  it  may  be  re- 


180     A  STUDY  OF   GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

membered  by  every  gentleman  in  the  room, 
that  I  this  day  declare,  with  the  utmost  sin- 
cerity, I  do  not  think  myself  equal  to  the 
command  I  am  honored  with.  As  to  pay,  I 
beg  leave  to  assure  the  Congress  that,  as  no 
pecuniary  consideration  could  have  tempted 
me  to  accept  this  arduous  employment,  at  the 
expense  of  my  domestic  ease  and  happiness, 
I  do  not  wish  to  make  any  profit  on  it.  I  will 
keep  an  exact  account  of  my  expenses.  Those, 
I  doubt  not,  they  will  discharge,  and  that  is 
all  I  desire." 

What  he  distrusted  in  himself  was  the  tech- 
nical preparation  which  nothing  but  a  larger 
military  experience  could  have  given,  and 
which  all  Americans  lacked.  He  stated  it  a 
year  later,  in  a  letter  written  to  recommend 
one  of  the  Continental  generals  for  an  impor- 
tant command.  "  His  wants,"  he  said,  "  are 
common  to  us  all,  —  the  want  of  experience 
to  move  upon  a  large  scale;  for  the  limited 
and  contracted  knowledge  which  any  of  us 
have  in  military  matters  stands  in  very  little 
stead,  and  is  greatly  overbalanced  by  sound 
judgment,  some  knowledge  of  men  and  books, 
especially  when  accompanied  by  an  enterpris- 
ing genius," 


WASHINGTON  181 

That  Washington,  in  taking  the  responsible 
leadership  in  the  colonial  revolt,  was  making 
the  greatest  of  all  sacrifices  to  the  cause  of 
American  freedom  was  seen  and  understood 
at  the  time.  John  Adams  wrote  to  Elbridge 
Gerry :  "  There  is  something  charming  to  me 
in  the  conduct  of  Washington.  A  gentleman 
of  one  of  the  first  fortunes  upon  the  conti- 
nent, leaving  his  delicious  retirement,  his 
family  and  friends,  sacrificing  his  ease  and 
hazarding  all  in  the  cause  of  his  country." 
We  must  remember  that  it  was  not  a  mere 
temporary  sacrifice  of  ease  and  "  delicious  re- 
tirement," and  the  society  of  family  and 
friends,  and  the  happy  activities  and  hospitali- 
ties of  Mount  Vernon,  that  Washington  was 
making.  He  was  putting  his  whole  future, 
his  whole  fortune,  and  even  his  life,  at  stake 
on  the  chances  of  the  war.  His  risk  in  rebellion 
was  greater  than  any  other,  when  he  made 
himself  its  chief ;  and  not  many  in  the  under- 
taking could  offer  so  much  to  its  risks.  In  the 
first  months  of  his  task  there  were  disheart- 
ened moments  when  he  repented  of  what  he 
had  done,  not  because  of  its  cost  or  its  risk  to 
himself,  but  because  of  the  seeming  hopeless- 
ness of  success ;  yet  never  but  once  can  we 


182     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

find  the  least  sign  of  a  disposition  to  draw 
back  from  the  work. 

The  discouragements  that  Washington  en- 
countered were  not  at  all  of  the  kind  that  he 
must  have  been  prepared  to  overcome. 

The  Trying 

Task  at  He  kuew,  of  course,  that  he  had  an 
*™  '  ^*"  army  to  create,  out  of  the  rawest  mate- 
rial and  with  the  crudest  and  scantiest  of  means. 
He  cannot  have  been  disappointed  on  finding 
that  the  forces  beleaguering  Boston  were  a 
motley  gathering  of  untrained  men,  accoutred 
in  all  sorts  of  fashions,  sheltered  in  all  sorts 
of  makeshift  ways,  enlisted  by  different  local 
committees,  with  great  uncertainty  as  to  the 
sources  of  their  food  and  their  pay.  But  he 
went  to  his  command  with  an  ardor  of  patriot- 
ism in  himself  which  made  him  expectant  of 
something  similar  in  all  who  professed  an  at- 
tachment to  the  patriot  cause.  He  looked  for 
that  especially  in  New  England,  where  the 
cause  had  seemed  to  have  its  firmest  support. 
He  had  idealized  New  England  patriotism,  it 
would  seem ;  for  General  Greene,  of  Rhode 
Island,  with  whom  he  formed  one  of  the  first 
and  warmest  of  his  army  friendships,  wrote  at 
this  time  to  a  friend :  "  His  excellency  has 
been  taught  to  believe  the  people  here  a  su- 


WASHINGTON  183 

perior  race."  So  it  sickened  him  to  discover 
that  many  of  the  common  people  of  the  region 
of  his  first  campaign  were,  actually,  if  Greene 
has  described  them  correctly,  "exceedingly 
avaricious,"  eager  to  make  profit  from  the 
army,  by  taking  all  possible  advantage  of  its 
needs.  He  was  troubled,  too,  and  saddened  by 
many  jealousies  and  quarrels  among  his  offi- 
cers over  questions  of  rank.  To  one,  a  general 
officer  of  promise  who  thought  of  resigning 
because  he  had  not  been  commissioned  to  his 
satisfaction,  Washington  wrote  a  noble  letter 
of  expostulation  and  reproach,  and  it  had  its 
effect :  "  In  the  usual  contests  of  empire  and 
ambition,"  he  said,  "the  conscience  of  a  sol- 
dier has  so  little  share  that  he  may  very  prop- 
erly insist  upon  his  claims  of  rank,  and  extend 
his  pretensions  even  to  punctilio;  but  in  such 
a  cause  as  this,  when  the  object  is  neither 
glory  nor  extent  of  territory,  but  a  defense  of 
all  that  is  dear  and  valuable  in  private  and 
public  life,  surely  every  post  ought  to  be 
deemed  honorable  in  which  a  man  can  serve 
his  country." 

Another  grievous  disappointment  that  he 
suffered  was  on  finding  how  quickly  the  mass 
of  those  who  had  taken  up  arms  grew  tired 


184     A   STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

of  their  undertaking  and  eager  to  escape.  He 
had  looked  for  more  steadfastness  like  his 
own  in  the  engagement  of  service  to  a  great 
cause,  and  counted  upon  reenlistments  from 
his  temporary  army,  of  enough  durability  to 
make  training  and  discipline  a  fairly  possible 
work.  He  learned  his  error  as  soon  as  the  va- 
rious short  terms  of  his  companies  and  regi- 
ments began  to  expire;  and  he  was  bowed  al- 
most to  despair,  even  then,  in  the  first  months 
of  his  long  task,  by  the  wearing  weight  of  a 
trouble  that  never  lightened  from  the  begin- 
ning to  the  end  of  the  war.  For  the  first  and 
last  time,  so  far  as  his  correspondence  reveals 
him,  his  strong  spirit  gave  way  to  an  out- 
spoken regret  that  he  had  taken  the  burden 
of  the  struggle  upon  himself.  Writing  confi- 
dentially to  his  friend,  Joseph  Keed,  lately 
his  military  secretary,  on  the  28th  of  Novem- 
ber, 1775,  he  unburdened  his  sore  heart  in  these 
words:  "Such  a  dearth  of  public  spirit  and 
want  of  virtue  ...  I  never  saw  before,  and 
pray  God  I  may  never  be  witness  to  again. 
.  .  .  Could  I  have  foreseen  what  I  have  and 
am  likely  to  experience,  no  consideration  upon 
earth  should  have  induced  me  to  accept  this 
command."    But  he  seems  after  this  to  have 


WASHINGTON  185 

nerved  himself  to  the  endurance  of  anything 
and  everything  that  might  come  in  the  way  of 
the  duty  to  which  he  was  pledged.  Once  in 
the  next  year,  after  he  had  been  driven  from 
New  York  and  was  striving  to  hold  together 
enough  of  forces  to  keep  control  of  the  river 
above  the  city,  he  exclaimed,  in  a  private  let- 
ter to  his  brother :  "  It  is  not  in  the  power  of 
words  to  describe  the  task  I  have.  Fifty  thou- 
sand pounds  should  not  induce  me  again  to 
undergo  what  I  have  done."  But  this  expres- 
sion of  a  weary  self-pity  only  measures  the  in- 
vincibility of  the  higher  motives  which  braced 
him  with  fortitude  to  undergo  his  trials  to  the 
end. 

Always,  it  was  the  moral  harassments  of 
his  work — the  impediments  and  discourage- 
ments that  arose  from  a  shallowness  in  the  pub- 
lic spirit  on  which  it  depended  for  support — 
that  were  most  painfully  trying  to  his  great 
soul.  The  natural  and  necessary  difficulties  of 
a  war  conducted  with  inadequate  means  he 
could  meet  with  cheerful  readiness  and  over- 
come. How  great  they  were  in  that  first  cam- 
paign, which  expelled  the  British  from  Boston, 
and  how  successfully  they  were  dealt  with,  we 
can  learn  from  a  letter  which  he  wrote  to  Con- 


186     A   STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

gress  on  the  4th  of  January,  1776.  "It  is 
not,"  he  said,  "in  the  pages  of  history,  per- 
haps, to  furnish  a  case  like  ours.  To  maintain  a 
post  within  musket-shot  of  the  enemy  for  six 
months  together  without  powder,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  disband  one  army  and  recruit 
another,  within  that  distance  of  twenty  odd 
British  regiments,  is  more,  probably,  than  ever 
was  attempted."  This  was  what  Washington 
had  done.  Five  weeks  later  he  reported: 
"There  are  near  two  thousand  men  now  in 
camp  without  firelocks"  ;  and  yet  by  the  end 
of  another  month  he  had  accomplished  the 
expulsion  of  the  British  from  Boston,  by  the 
seizure  of  Dorchester  Heights.  They  sailed 
for  Halifax,  to  prepare  for  fresh  endeavors, 
and  Washington  made  haste  to  New  York, 
with  most  of  his  forces,  to  secure  possession 
of  the  Hudson  River,  which  he  recognized  as 
the  one  vital  condition  of  success  in  the  war. 
The  Americans  were  sure  to  be  driven  from  the 
sea,  and  New  England  would  then  be  separated 
hopelessly  from  the  other  States  if  control  of 
the  Hudson  valley  should  be  lost.  This  was 
now  the  dominant  consideration  in  his  mind. 
The  guarding  of  the  Hudson  became  his  prime 
task,  and  he  took  it  personally  upon  himself. 


WASHINGTON  187 

I  do  not  mean  to  touch  the  story  of  the 
campaigns  of  the  next  six  years,  in  that  field  be- 
tween the  Hudson  and  the  Delaware  „...   „ 

Bitter  Ex- 

from  which  no  allurements  of  oppor-  porienceaox 

1776-77 

tunity  for  glory  could  draw  Washing- 
ton away.  My  wish  is  to  open  some  glimpses 
of  the  under-history  of  those  years ;  some  dis- 
closure of  what  they  were  in  the  experience  of 
the  commander-in-chief,  to  see  what  trials  of 
the  spirit  he  had,  and  how  they  were  endured. 
That  he  was  driven  from  Long  Island  and 
from  the  city  of  New  York  was  inevitable, 
when  Howe  came  back  from  Halifax  with 
thirty  thousand  veteran  troops,  and  Washing- 
ton's force,  including  bodies  of  the  rawest 
militia,  was  scarcely  two  thirds  as  much.  After 
the  battle  of  Long  Island  he  wrote  to  Con- 
gress :  "  The  miUtia  .  .  .  are  dismayed,  in- 
tractable, and  impatient  to  return.  Great  num- 
bers of  them  have  gone  off,  in  some  instances 
almost  by  whole  regiments."  He  goes  on 
to  say  that  their  want  of  discipline  has  in- 
fected the  remaining  soldiery,  and  he  feels 
obliged  to  confess,  "  with  the  deepest  con- 
cern," his  "want  of  confidence  in  the  gen- 
erality of  the  troops."  His  distrust  was  justi- 
fied on  the  retreat  from  New  York,  when  two 


188      A   STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

of  his  brigades  ran  away  in  panic  from  about 
fifty  of  the  enemy,  leaving  him  to  escape  cap- 
ture by  following  their  flight.  It  was  a  few 
days  after  this  that  he  wrote  in  deep  despond- 
ency to  Lund  Washington,  his  relative:  "  Such 
is  my  situation  that  if  I  were  to  wish  the  bit- 
terest curse  to  an  enemy  on  this  side  of  the 
grave  I  should  put  him  in  my  stead.  I  see  the 
impossibility  of  serving  with  reputation,  or 
doing  any  essential  service  to  the  cause  by 
continuing  in  command;  and  yet  I  am  told 
that  if  I  quit  the  command  inevitable  ruin 
will  follow,  from  the  distractions  that  will  en- 
sue. In  confidence  I  tell  you  that  I  never 
was  in  such  an  unhappy,  divided  state  since 
I  was  born." 

Washington  had  now  come  fully  into  the 
beginnings  of  his  long  and  bitter  experience 
of  the  impossibility  of  creating,  or  maintain- 
ing, or  operating  an  efficient  army  under  the 
conditions  of  government  which  the  revolting 
Americans  had  formed.  Their  central  assem- 
bly of  representatives,  known  as  the  Conti- 
nental Congress,  had  made  the  fatal  mistake 
of  not  assuming  the  authority  and  the  powers 
that  were  necessary  to  the  performance  of 
the  duties  it  had  assumed.    It  had  taken  the 


WASHINGTON  189 

responsibilities  of  the  war  upon  itself,  had 
adopted  the  army,  had  commissioned  its  offi- 
cers, was  giving  them  its  orders  and  was  sub- 
jecting them  to  its  laws.  If  it  had  a  right  to 
do  these  things,  it  had  logically  and  equally 
the  right  to  control  enlistments  for  the  army 
and  to  raise  the  necessary  means  for  its  sup- 
port. Its  right  to  assume  any  governing  au- 
thority, as  an  assembly  representative  of  the 
people  of  the  thirteen  revolting  colonies,  was 
the  indisputable  but  indefinable  right  of  rev- 
olution, which  belongs  always  to  all  peoples, 
when  they  find  need  to  exercise  it.  The  Continen- 
tal Congress  shared  that  right  with  the  revolu- 
tionary legislatures  formed  in  the  several  States ; 
but  its  own  claims  to  authority  were  clearly 
precedent  to  theirs.  It  had  led  the  action 
which  transformed  them  from  dependent  col- 
onies into  independent  States ;  and  it  had  put 
its  stamp  on  their  new  character,  while  nation- 
alizing their  union,  by  its  authoritative  Decla- 
ration of  Independence.  It  held  a  primacy  in 
the  revolutionary  government,  as  the  plainest 
of  facts,  and  had  all  the  reasons  that  make 
right  for  taking  to  itself,  as  of  course,  the  full 
authority  and  power  to  act  for  the  United 
States,  from  the  beginning,  in  matters  of  com- 


190     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

mon  concern.  That  it  did  not  do  so  was  be- 
cause too  many  of  the  leading  patriots  of  the 
revolution  were  provincial  in  their  political 
ideas,  fearing  to  trust  authority  anywhere 
beyond  their  own  local  reach.  Hence  the  Con- 
gress of  the  union,  while  taking  the  responsi- 
bilities of  the  war  upon  itself,  left  most  of  the 
power  to  fulfill  them  to  be  claimed  and  pos- 
sessed by  the  several  States. 

The  conditions  which  this  produced  were 
such  that  nobody  except  Washington  seems 
conceivable  as  a  leader  of  the  army  to  success 
in  the  war.  Month  by  month  there  was  less  of 
unity  in  anything  except  the  trust  and  the  hope 
which  he  inspired.  Month  by  month  Congress 
lost  even  influence  to  persuade  the  States  to 
furnish  quotas  of  troops  and  quotas  of  money 
to  the  military  chest.  Month  by  month  the  drib- 
lets of  men  and  means  from  the  States  came 
more  tardily,  more  meagrely,  and  less  in  worth. 
Who  but  Washington  could  have  wrung  from 
them  even  the  little  that  came?  For  he  was 
driven  continually  to  make  personal  appeals 
to  the  States  directly,  because  Congress  had 
failed.  And,  then,  how  little  that  he  received 
accorded  with  his  want  and  his  request !  From 
the  beginning  of  his  experience  at  Cambridge 


WASHINGTON  191 

he  pleaded  for  enlistments  long  enough  in 
term  to  give  him  an  army  that  could  be  disci- 
plined and  trained.  He  spent  hours  in  writing 
arguments  to  show  the  wastefulness  as  well  as 
the  futility  of  an  attempt  to  carry  on  war  with 
a  makeshift  army  of  temporary  soldiers,  serv- 
ing for  a  few  months,  or  for  a  single  year,  and 
eked  out,  in  all  emergencies,  by  raw  local  mili- 
tia, summoned  hastily  to  camp.  His  labor  was 
vain.  Neither  Congress  nor  the  States  would 
offer  inducements  that  could  bring  more  than 
some  small  number  of  men  into  the  Conti- 
nental ranks  "  for  the  war,"  or  for  any  ade- 
quate period  of  time.  From  beginning  to 
end  of  the  war  they  kept  him  at  least  half  de- 
pendent, at  the  best  of  times,  on  militia  and 
raw  recruits. 

After  the  withdrawal  from  New  York  came 
the  loss  of  the  forts  on  the  lower  Hudson,  and 
the  retreat  of  Washington,  with  a  dissolving 
army,  through  New  Jersey  to  the  Delaware 
and  beyond  it,  still  keeping,  however,  a  guard 
in  the  highlands  of  the  valley  to  hold  those 
upper  passes  of  the  river.  And  now  ignorant 
criticism  and  jealous  intrigue  began  to  work 
together  against  the  unhappy  commander-in- 
chief.    For  a  time  there  were  formidable  incli- 


192     A  STUDY  OF   GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

nations  in  high  quarters  to  put  the  treacherous 
adventurer,  Charles  Lee,  in  Washington's 
place;  and  Lee,  to  promote  the  scheme,  held 
back  his  command  from  the  junction  with 
Washington  that  he  had  been  ordered  to 
make.  Fortunately,  while  the  intrigue  was  in 
progress,  Lee  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  en- 
emy, and  they  kept  him  out  of  mischief  for 
the  next  year  and  a  half.  Meantime,  the  few 
regiments  with  Washington  were  coming  to 
the  end  of  their  short  periods  of  enlistment 
and  were  dropping  away.  On  the  19th  of 
November,  1776,  he  wrote  to  his  brother: 
*^In  ten  days  from  this  date  there  will  not  be 
above  two  thousand  men,  if  that  number,  of 
the  fixed,  established  regiments  on  this  side  of 
Hudson  River,  to  oppose  Howe's  whole  army, 
and  very  little  more  on  the  other,  to  secure 
the  eastern  colonies  and  the  important  passes 
leading  through  the  highlands  to  Albany 
and  the  country  about  the  lakes.  In  short, 
it  is  impossible  for  me,  in  the  compass  of  a 
letter,  to  give  you  any  idea  of  our  situation, 
of  my  difficulties,  and  the  constant  perplex- 
ities and  mortifications  I  meet  with,  derived 
from  the  unhappy  policy  of  short  enlistments 
and  delaying  them  too  long.  I  am  wearied 


WASHINGTON  193 

almost  to  death  with  the  retrograde  motion  of 
things." 

Even  recourse  to  the  militia  had  failed  him ; 
for  New  Jersey  seemed  to  have  given  itself  up 
to  the  British  since  they  entered  that  State. 
In  a  letter  to  Governor  Trumbull,  of  Connecti- 
cut, on  the  12th  of  December,  he  wrote :  "  The 
inhabitants  of  this  State,  either  from  fear  or 
disaffection,  almost  to  a  man,  refused  to  turn 
out.  I  could  not  bring  together  above  a  thou- 
sand men,  and  even  on  those  very  little  depend- 
ence could  be  put."  Nevertheless,  within  a 
fortnight  from  that  writing,  on  Christmas 
Eve,  in  a  storm  of  sleet,  he  made  his  famous 
return  across  the  Delaware,  with  only  twenty- 
four  hundred  men,  surprised  the  Hessians  at 
Trenton,  and  began  the  movements  which  re- 
covered, in  position,  nearly  all  that  he  had 
lost  in  the  previous  two  months.  The  achieve- 
ment was  a  revelation  of  Washington's  rare 
ability,  and  it  had  splendid  effects,  for  a  time. 
It  encouraged  France  to  give  important  secret 
aid  to  the  States,  in  money  and  stores;  and, 
temporarily,  it  inspirited  the  cause  at  home. 
Congress  gave  Washington  extraordinary  pow- 
ers for  six  months,  to  raise  new  battalions, 
to  displace  and  appoint  all  officers  under  the 


194     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

rank  of  brigadier-general,  etc. ;  but  the  result 
appears  to  have  been  much  the  same  as  on  a 
later  occasion,  when  such  powers  were  put 
into  his  hands,  and  when  he  was  constrained 
to  write :  "  Congress  has  added  to  my  embar- 
rassments, .  .  .  inasmuch  as  it  gives  me  powers 
without  the  means  of  execution."  The  truth 
was,  that  Congress  had  few  real  powers  to  con- 
fer; it  had  thrown  them  away ;  and  its  action 
was  little  more  than  an  attempt  to  escape  from 
its  own  responsibilities. 

For  the  time  being,  however,  there  was  en- 
couragement in  the  prospects  of  the  command- 
er-in-chief, and  in  February  (1777)  he  wrote 
to  his  brother :  "  If  we  can  once  get  the  new 
army  complete,  and  the  Congress  will  take  care 
to  have  it  properly  supplied,  I  think  we  may 
hereafter  bid  defiance  to  Great  Britain  and 
her  foreign  auxiliaries."  But  the  hopefulness 
that  leaned  on  those  "  if s  "  was  downfallen 
very  soon.  Early  in  March  he  is  confessing 
confidentially  to  Governor  Trumbull  that  a 
few  days  more  will  find  him  with  almost  no- 
thing but  militia  to  depend  upon,  for  what- 
ever hostilities  the  spring  may  set  in  motion. 
In  April  he  is  writing  to  the  president  of  Con- 
gress:   "If  the  men  that  are  raised,  few  as 


WASHINGTON  195 

they  are,  could  be  got  into  the  field,  it  would 
be  a  matter  of  some  consolation ;  [but]  every 
method  that  I  have  been  able  to  devise  has 
proved  ineffectual."  On  the  1st  of  June  he 
states  to  Kichard  Henry  Lee,  then  in  Congress, 
that  recruiting  "seems  to  be  at  an  end." 

But  the  small  new  army  that  Washington 
did  succeed  in  assembling  that  summer  had 
more  durability  of  constitution  than  any  that 
had  come  under  his  hands  before,  and  he 
was  able  to  fashion  it  somewhat  nearly  into 
the  character  he  desired.  Some  of  it  had  to 
be  spared  for  the  northern  field,  to  meet  Bur- 
goyne's  invasion  from  Canada ;  but  that  inva- 
sion roused  a  spirit  in  New  York  and  in  the 
neighboring  New  England  States  which  gave 
splendid  usefulness  to  their  militia  in  the  north- 
ern campaign.  General  Schuyler  had  organ- 
ized the  resistance  to  Burgoyne  with  ability; 
Stark,  Arnold,  and  Morgan  fought  him  to  a 
stand  and  a  surrender;  but  General  Gates, 
whom  Congress  sent  to  supersede  Schuyler, 
took  the  laurels  of  the  great  victory,  and  as- 
pired now  to  the  chief  command. 

Washington,  meantime,  was  contending 
ably  and  valiantly,  but  unsuccessfully,  in  New 
Jersey  and  Pennsylvania,  with  Howe,  who  had 


196     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

double  his  force.  He  had  fought  losing  battles 
at  the  Brandy  wine  and  at  German  town ;  the 
British  had  entered  Philadelphia ;  the  prestige 
of  the  great  leader  seemed  declining  again. 
New  intrigues  for  his  displacement,  and  this 
time  by  Gates,  were  set  on  foot.  The  mean 
story  of  "  the  Conway  Cabal "  is  too  familiar 
for  repetition  ;  I  mention  it  only  as  one  of  the 
trials  and  the  provings  that  revealed  the  lofty 
character  of  Washington  to  the  world.  The 
simple  manliness  of  the  way  in  which  he  drew 
the  conspiracy  out  of  darkness  and  secrecy 
into  open  day  was  all  that  could  be  needed, 
then  or  since,  to  condemn  it  to  the  limbo  in 
history  of  despised  things. 

In  quality  the  army  was  better  than  it  had 
ever  been  before ;  but  its  numbers  were  insig- 
nificant, compared  with  what  it  had 

The  Winter  ,11  «.    • 

atvauey  to  do,  and  the  poverty  oi  its  equip- 
"^*"  ment  is  almost  past  belief.  Washing- 
ton began  pleading  in  September  for  blankets 
and  shoes,  want  of  which  latter,  especially, 
had  hindered  the  movement  of  troops;  but 
December  found  the  suffering  Army  of  Inde- 
pendence not  only  more  shoeless  and  blanket- 
less  than  it  had  been  three  months  before,  but 
at  the  verge  of  being  starved.  We,  all  of  us, 


WASHINGTON  197 

have  some  notion  in  our  minds  of  its  pitiable 
condition  in  that  dreadful  winter  of  1777-78, 
which  it  lived  through  in  huts  that  it  built 
for  itself  at  Valley  Forge ;  Washington's  re- 
port to  Congress  of  the  state  of  things  exist- 
ing on  the  23d  of  December  has  been  quoted 
very  often  and  is  familiar  to  most  of  us ;  but 
this  review  of  the  trials  which  proved  the 
greatness  of  the  man  would  be  very  incom- 
plete if  it  did  not  recall  some  passages  from 
that  report: — 

"  I  am  now  convinced  beyond  a  doubt,"  he 
wrote,  "that,  unless  some  great  and  capital 
change  suddenly  takes  [place]  in  that  [the 
commissary]  line,  this  army  must  inevitably  be 
reduced  to  one  or  other  of  these  three  things : 
starve,  dissolve,  or  disperse  in  order  to  obtain 
subsistence  in  the  best  manner  they  can.  .  .  . 
Yesterday  afternoon,  receiving  information 
that  the  enemy  in  force  had  left  the  city 
[Philadelphia]  and  were  advancing  toward 
Derby  with  the  apparent  design  to  forage,  and 
draw  subsistence  from  that  part  of  the  coun- 
try, I  ordered  the  troops  to  be  in  readiness, 
that  I  might  give  every  opposition  in  my 
power ;  when,  behold,  to  my  great  mortifica- 
tion, I  was  not  only  informed  but  convinced 


198     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

that  the  men  were  unable  to  stir  on  account 
of  provision,  and  that  a  dangerous  mutiny, 
begun  the  night  before,  and  which  with  diffi- 
culty was  suppressed  by  the  spirited  exertions 
of  some  officers,  was  still  much  to  be  appre- 
hended. This  brought  forth  the  only  commis- 
sary in  the  purchasing  line  in  this  camp;  and 
with  him  this  melancholy  and  alarming  truth, 
that  he  had  not  a  single  hoof  of  any  kind  to 
slaughter,  and  not  more  than  twenty-five  bar- 
rels of  flour.  All  I  could  do  under  these  circum- 
stances was  to  send  out  a  few  light  parties  to 
watch  and  harass  the  enemy,  whilst  other  par- 
ties were  instantly  detached  different  ways  to 
collect,  if  possible,  as  much  provision  as  would 
satisfy  the  present  pressing  wants  of  the  sol- 
diery. But  will  this  answer?  No  sir;  three  or 
four  days  of  bad  weather  would  prove  our 
destruction."  He  proceeds  to  considerations 
which,  he  says,  "justify  my  saying  that  the 
present  commissaries  are  by  no  means  equal 
to  the  execution  of  the  office,  or  that  the  dis- 
affection of  the  people  is  past  all  belief.  The 
misfortune,  however,  does  in  my  opinion  pro- 
ceed from  both  causes ;  and  though  I  have 
been  tender  heretofore  of  giving  any  opinion, 
or  lodging  complaints,  as  the  change  in  that 


WASHINGTON  199 

department  took  place  contrary  to  my  judg- 
ment, and  the  consequences  thereof  were  pre- 
dicted, yet,  finding  that  the  inactivity  of  the 
army,  whether  for  want  of  provisions,  clothes, 
or  other  essentials,  is  charged  to  my  account, 
not  only  by  the  common  vulgar  but  by  those 
in  power,  it  is  time  to  speak  plain  in  exculpa- 
tion of  myself.  With  truth,  then,  I  can  declare 
that  no  man,  in  my  opinion,  ever  had  his 
measures  more  impeded  than  I  have,  by  every 
department  of  the  army.  Since  the  month  of 
July  we  have  had  no  assistance  from  the  quar- 
termaster-general, and  to  the  want  of  assist- 
ance from  this  department  the  commissary- 
general  charges  great  part  of  his  deficiency. 
.  .  .  Few  men  [have]  more  than  one  shirt, 
many  only  the  moiety  of  one,  and  some  none 
at  all.  In  addition  .  .  .  (besides  a  number  of 
men  confined  to  hospitals  for  want  of  shoes, 
and  others  in  farmers'  houses  on  the  same  ac- 
count) we  have,  by  a  field-return  this  day  made, 
no  less  than  2898  men  now  in  camp  unfit  for 
duty,  because  they  are  barefoot  and  otherwise 
naked.  .  .  .  Since  the  4th  inst.  our  numbers 
fit  for  duty,  from  the  hardships  and  exposures 
they  have  undergone,  particularly  on  account 
of  blankets  (numbers  having  been  obliged,  and 


200     A   STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

still  are,  to  sit  up  all  night  by  fires,  instead 
of  taking:  comfortable  rest  in  a  natural  and 
common  way)  have  decreased  near  2000  men. 
...  It  adds  not  a  little  to  my  other  difficul- 
ties and  distress  to  find  that  much  more  is  ex- 
pected of  me  than  is  possible  to  be  performed, 
and  that  upon  the  ground  of  safety  and  policy 
I  am  obliged  to  conceal  the  true  state  of  the 
army  from  public  view,  and  thereby  expose 
myself  to  detraction  and  calumny." 

This  was  written  late  in  December.  At  the 
end  of  two  months  more  the  state  of  things 
does  not  seem  to  have  improved ;  for  General 
Greene,  writing  to  General  Knox,  on  the  26th 
of  February,  had  this  story  to  tell :  "Our 
troops  are  getting  naked,  and  they  were  seven 
days  without  bread.  .  .  .  The  seventh  day 
they  came  before  their  superior  officers  and 
told  their  sufferings  in  as  respectful  terms  as  if 
they  had  been  humble  petitioners  for  special 
favors;  they  added  that  it  would  be  impos- 
sible to  continue  in  camp  any  longer  without 
support.  Happily,  relief  arrived  from  the  little 
collections  I  had  made  [in  a  foraging  expedi- 
tion] and  some  others,  and  prevented  the  army 
from  disbanding.  We  are  still  in  danger  of 
starving;  the   commissary  department  is  in 


WASHINGTON  201 

a  most  wretched  condition,  the  quartermaster's 
in  worse.  Hundreds  and  hundreds  of  our 
horses  have  actually  starved  to  death." 

The  little  army  which  went  through  this 
bitter  experience  and  bore  it  so  admirably  was 
made  up  of  the  few  men  whom  Washington 
had  been  able  to  secure  for  a  lengthened  term 
of  service ;  who  had  entered  it  with  some  no- 
tion of  being  real  soldiers,  and  who  were  being 
effectively  disciplined  and  trained.  What  could 
he  have  done  in  like  circumstances  with  his 
forces  of  the  previous  year  ?  And  still  there 
were  sources  of  deep  disaffection  in  the  army 
to  give  anxiety  and  labor  to  the  commander- 
in-chief.  Its  officers  were  receiving  wretched 
pittances  of  pay,  in  paper  money  that  was 
losing  its  purchasing  power.  For  those  who 
had  families,  and  no  private  means,  it  became 
more  and  more  impossible  to  stay  in  the  ser- 
vice, and  resignations  came  thick  and  fast. 

Washington's  urgency  for  measures  to  put 
this  and  other  military  matters  on  a  better 
footing,  especially  in  the  commissary  ^^^^^ 
and  quartermaster  departments,  in-  nessinthe 
duced  Congress,  in  January  (1778), 
to  send  a  committee  to  his  headquarters  for 
conference  with  him.     The  conference  was 


202     A  STUDY   OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

long;  the  whole  subject  of  army  administra- 
tion, particularly  with  reference  to  food  and 
clothing  and  the  retention  of  experienced 
of&cers,  was  gone  over,  and  the  recommenda- 
tions and  suggestions  of  the  commander-in- 
chief  were  embodied  in  an  elaborate  paper, 
with  which  the  committee  returned.  There 
seemed  to  be  a  promise  of  prompt  endeavors, 
at  least,  to  remedy  the  worst  evils  of  the  mili- 
tary system.  But  weeks  ran  to  months  and  the 
months  to  the  end  of  the  year,  and  nothing 
effectual  was  done,  —  except  that  General 
Greene,  the  ablest  of  Washington's  division 
commanders,  was  persuaded  to  quit  the  field 
service  which  he  preferred  and  take  the  du- 
ties of  quartermaster-general.  In  doing  this 
he  was  generously  and  patriotically  sacrificing 
his  ambitions ;  for,  as  he  wrote  afterward  to 
Washington,  "  nobody  ever  heard  of  a  quar- 
termaster in  history,  as  such";  but  '^I  en- 
gaged in  the  business,"  he  said,  "as  well  out 
of  compassion  to  your  excellency  as  from  a 
regard  to  the  public.  I  thought  your  task  too 
great,  to  be  commander-in-chief  and  quarter- 
master at  the  same  time."  Greene  made  the 
best  of  the  wretched  conditions  of  his  work ; 
but  after  a  year  of  hard  service  he  tried  to  re- 


WASHINGTON  203 

Sign,  disgusted  with  the  supineness  of  Con- 
gress and  the  needless  difficulties  that  were 
left  or  put  in  his  way.  He  was  persuaded, 
however,  to  stay  in  the  thankless  office  through 
half  of  another  year. 

Undoubtedly  Greene's  work  brought  con- 
siderable relief  to  Washington  and  the  army ; 
but  there  is  no  sign  of  anything  done  by  Con- 
gress that  materially  bettered  the  conditions 
that  were  needlessly  bad.  In  April  the  anxious 
commander  is  still  reporting  resignations  of 
officers  at  the  general  rate  of  two  or  three 
a  day,  and  writing :  "  I  do  not  to  this  hour 
know  whether  .  .  .  the  old  or  new  establish- 
ment is  to  take  place ;  [and]  how  to  dispose 
of  the  officers  in  consequence."  At  the  end  of 
May  he  is  driven  to  write  to  Gouverneur  Mor- 
ris, one  of  the  army  committee  of  Congress, 
and  one  of  its  helplessly  good  members,  plead- 
ing "  that  something,  I  do  not  care  what,"  he 
says,  "  may  be  fixed  and  the  regulations  com- 
pleted. It  is  a  lamentable  prospect,"  he  con- 
tinues, "  that  we  are  again  to  be  plunged  into 
a  moving  state  [quitting  camp,  that  is,  for  the 
field]  (after  six  months  of  repose)  before  the 
intended  regulations  are  made,  and  the  officers 
informed  who  are  and  who  not  to  be  con- 


204     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

tinued  in  service  under  the  new  establish- 
ment." 

A  few  days  more  bring  the  ill-treated  army 
to  that  "moving  state,"  from  Valley  Forge, 
to  follow  the  British  in  their  withdrawal  from 
Philadelphia  to  New  York ;  and  Washington, 
striking  them  at  Monmouth  Court  House, 
snatches  victory  from  the  defeat  which  Lee, 
his  treacherous  second  in  command,  attempted 
to  bring  about.  "America,"  said  Alexander 
Hamilton,  writing  of  that  achievement  to  a 
friend,  "owes  a  great  deal  to  General  Wash- 
ington for  this  day's  work.  A  general  rout, 
dismay  and  disgrace  would  have  attended  the 
whole  army  in  any  other  hands  but  his.  By 
his  own  good  sense  and  fortitude  he  turned 
the  fate  of  the  day.  ...  By  his  own  presence 
he  brought  order  out  of  confusion,  animated 
his  troops,  and  led  them  to  success."  It  was 
one  of  the  few  opportunities  that  Washington 
had  for  proving  brilliantly  how  great  a  soldier 
he  was. 

And  yet  the  army  with  which  he  could  do 
this  is  still  distracted  by  its  long-neglected 
discontents.  Nine  days  after  the  Monmouth 
battle  he  is  writing  that  "  Congress  can  form 
no  adequate  idea  of  the  discontents  prevailing 


WASHINGTON  205 

on  account  of  the  unsettled  state  of  rank,  and 
the  uncertainty  in  which  officers  are  as  to  their 
future  situation " ;  and  a  month  later  he  is 
addressing  that  useless  hody  again,  with  "  re- 
luctance/' "to  renew,"  he  says,  "my  impor- 
tunities on  the  subject  of  the  committee  of 
arrangement.  The  present  unsettled  state  of 
the  army  is  productive  of  so  much  dissatisfac- 
tion, and  of  such  a  variety  of  disputes,  that 
almost  the  whole  of  my  time  is  now  employed 
in  finding  temporary  and  inadequate  expe- 
dients to  quiet  the  minds  of  officers  and  keep 
business  on  a  tolerable  sort  of  footing."  And 
so  it  goes  on,  through  the  year  and  through 
the  winter  beyond  it,  into  another  campaign- 
ing season;  and  nothing  but  the  strenuous, 
unremitting  exertion  of  his  great  personal  in- 
fluence keeps  enough  of  officers  and  men  in 
camp  or  field  to  maintain  a  show  of  war. 

Hitherto,  in  all  his  sore  trials  from  the  impo- 
tence of  Congress,  he  has  never  swerved  from 
his  careful  attitude  of  respect  for  and  deference 
to  the  civil  authority  supposed  to  be  lodged 
in  its  hands;  but  now  he  finds  that  attitude 
very  hard  to  maintain.  In  a  letter  to  the 
speaker  of  the  Virginia  House  of  Delegates 
(December  18,  1778)  he  ventures  to  express 


206      A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

what  he  thinks  is  a  public  belief,  "  that  the 
States  at  this  time  are  badly  represented,  and 
that  the  great  and  important  concerns  of  the 
nation  are  horribly  conducted,  for  want  either 
of  abilities  or  application  in  the  members,  or 
through  the  discord  and  party  views  of  some 
individuals."  A  few  days  after  writing  this  he 
is  called  to  Philadelphia,  for  a  conference  with 
Congress,  and  writes  from  there  (December 
30,  1778)  to  the  same  correspondent :  — 

^'  I  have  seen  nothing  since  I  came  here  (on 
the  22d  inst.)  to  change  my  opinion  of  men 
or  measures,  but  abundant  reason  to  be  con- 
vinced that  our  affairs  are  in  a  more  distressed, 
ruinous  and  deplorable  condition  than  they 
have  been  in  since  the  commencement  of  the 
war.  By  a  faithful  laborer,  then,  in  the  cause ; 
—  by  a  man  who  is  daily  injuring  his  private 
estate  without  even  the  smallest  earthly  ad- 
vantage not  common  to  all,  in  case  of  a  favor- 
able issue  to  the  dispute ;  —  by  one  who  wishes 
the  prosperity  of  America  most  devoutly,  and 
sees,  or  thinks  he  sees  it,  on  the  brink  of  ruin, 
you  are  beseeched  most  earnestly,  my  dear 
Colonel  Harrison,  to  exert  yourself  in  endea- 
voring to  rescue  your  country  by  .  .  .  send- 
ing your  ablest  and  best  men  to  Congress. 


WASHINGTON  207 

...  If  I  was  to  be  called  upon  to  draw  a 
picture  of  the  times  and  of  men,  from  what 
I  have  seen  and  heard  and  in  part  know,  I 
should  in  one  word  say  that  idleness,  dissipa- 
tion and  extravagance  seem  to  have  laid  fast 
hold  of  most  of  them ;  that  speculation,  pecu- 
lation, and  an  insatiable  thirst  for  riches  seem 
to  have  got  the  better  of  every  other  consider- 
ation and  almost  of  every  order  of  men ;  that 
party  disputes  and  personal  quarrels  are  the 
great  business  of  the  day,  whilst  the  momen- 
tous concerns  of  an  empire,  —  a  great  and 
accumulated  debt,  —  ruined  finances, —  de- 
preciated money  and  want  of  credit  .  .  .  are 
but  secondary  considerations  and  postponed 
from  day  to  day  and  from  week  to  week. 
...  I  again  repeat  to  you  that  this  is  not  an 
exaggerated  account ;  that  it  is  an  alarming 
one  I  do  not  deny,  and  confess  to  you  that  I 
feel  more  real  distress  on  account  of  the  present 
appearances  of  things  than  I  have  done  at 
any  one  time  since  the  commencement  of  the 
dispute." 

Lafayette,  who  had  gone  to  France  (now 
in  open  alliance  with  the  States)  to  solicit  na- 
val and  military  aid,  found  that  the  notori- 
ous factitiousness  and  incapacity  of  Congress 


w3     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

was  ruining  the  American  cause  abroad,  as 
well  as  at  home.  "  For  God's  sake/'  he  wrote 
to  Washington  (June  12,  1779)  "prevent 
their  loudly  disputing  together ;  nothing  hurts 
so  much  the  interest  and  reputation  of  Amer- 
ica as  to  hear  of  their  intestine  quarrels";  and 
that  good  French  friend  addressed  a  remon- 
strance on  the  subject  to  Congress  itself. 

By  this  time  (in  1779)  all  the  old  sufferings 
of  the  army  from  the  systemless  mismanage- 
ment and  neglect  of  everything,  in  its  com- 
missariat and  otherwise,  that  depended  upon 
civil  aofents  and  authorities,  were  beinjr  more 
than  doubled  by  the  state  of  the  "  continental 
currency,"  which  had  sunk  to  the  verge  of 
worthlessness.  "  The  depreciation  of  it  is  got 
to  so  alarming  a  point,"  wrote  Washington 
to  John  Jay,  in  April,  "  that  a  wagon-load  of 
money  will  scarcely  purchase  a  wagon-load  of 
provisions."  His  officers,  more  and  more  un- 
able to  support  themselves,  are  dropping  away 
from  him  continually.  In  December  there  is 
starvation  in  his  army  again.  He  makes  a  des- 
perate appeal  personally  to  the  nearest  States, 
telling  them  that  his  forces  have  been  "  five 
or  six  weeks  on  half  allowance,"  and  he  writes 
to  Congress  that  part  of  the  army  has  been 


WASHINGTON  209 

several  days  without  bread.  A  month  later 
there  is  no  improvement ;  for  we  find  him 
turning  to  the  county  magistrates  of  New  Jer- 
sey, with  a  call  for  grain  and  cattle,  which  he 
makes  known  that  he  must  take  by  impress- 
ment if  they  are  not  furnished  without.  Fi- 
nally, the  climax  of  congressional  impotence 
is  reached,  in  February,  1780,  when  it  throws 
up  its  useless  hands,  abandons  even  the  pre- 
tense of  attempting  to  supply  the  wants  of  the 
army,  resolving  that  it  will  make  requisitions 
upon  the  States  and  so  cast  the  duty  and  re- 
sponsibility on  them.  As  Madison  wrote  to 
Jefferson,  the  position  of  Congress  had  thus 
^*  undergone  a  total  change  from  what  it  ori- 
ginally was."  Now,  he  said,  "  they  can  neither 
enlist,  pay  nor  feed  a  single  soldier,  nor  exe- 
cute any  other  purpose,  but  as  the  means  are 
first  put  into  their  hands." 

The  working  of  the  new  plan  was  soon  de- 
scribed to  Congress  by  Washington,  who  wrote 
in  April :  "  The  system  of  State  supplies  .  .  . 
has  proved  in  its  operation  pernicious  beyond 
description.  .  .  .  Some  States,  from  their  in- 
ternal ability  and  local  advantages,  furnish 
their  troops  pretty  amply,  not  merely  with 
clothing,  but  with  many  little  comforts  and 


210     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

conveniencies ;  others  supply  them  with  some 
necessaries,  but  on  a  more  contracted  scale; 
while  others  have  it  in  their  power  to  do  little 
or  nothing  at  all.  The  officers  and  men  in  the 
routine  of  duty  mix  daily  and  compare  cir- 
cumstances. .  .  .  Those  who  fare  worse  than 
others  of  course  are  dissatisfied.  .  .  .  They 
become  disgusted  with  a  service  which  makes 
such  injurious  distinction.  .  .  .  The  officers 
resign,  and  we  have  scarcely  a  sufficient  num- 
ber left  to  take  care  even  of  the  fragments  of 
corps  that  remain.  The  men  have  not  this  re- 
source. They  murmur,  brood  over  their  dis- 
contents and  have  lately  shown  a  disposition 
to  enter  into  seditious  combinations." 

On  receipt  of  this  letter  Congress  appointed 
a  committee  of  three  to  confer  with  Washing- 
ton, giving  the  committee  extensive  powers. 
This  action  was  hotly  opposed,  on  grounds 
that  were  reported  by  the  French  minister  at 
Philadelphia  to  his  government  as  follows : 
"  It  was  said  that  this  would  be  putting  too 
much  power  in  a  few  hands,  and  especially  in 
those  of  the  commander-in-chief;  that  his  in- 
fluence was  already  too  great ;  that  even  his 
virtues  afforded  motives  for  alarm;  that  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  army,  joined  to  the  kind  of 


WASHINGTON  211 

dictatorship  already  confided  to  him,  put  Con- 
gress and  the  United  States  at  his  mercy ;  that 
it  was  not  expedient  to  expose  a  man  of  the 
highest  virtues  to  such  temptations." 

But  even  the  apportioning  and  addressing 
of  requisitions  to  the  States  proved  too  much 
for  the  energy  of  the  assembly  which  embod- 
ied all  existing  authority  for  the  government 
of  the  United  States  of  America.  Most  of  the 
men  of  the  small  army  which  had  nobly  borne 
the  hardships  of  the  past  two  years  were  pear 
the  dates  of  their  discharge,  and  Congress 
could  reach  agreement  on  nothing  that  it 
would  do  toward  getting  their  places  filled  by 
the  States.  In  the  past  November,  Washing- 
ton had  reported  that  the  terms  of  over  8000 
would  expire  in  the  course  of  the  next  five 
months ;  and  urged  prompt  requisitions  on  the 
States.  In  December,  when  nothing  had  been 
done,  he  renewed  his  urgency,  reminding  Con- 
gress that  "several  of  the  [State]  assem- 
blies are  now  sitting,  and  if  the  requisi- 
tions of  Congress  do  not  reach  them  before 
they  rise  the  delay  on  assembling  them  will 
protract  our  succors  to  a  period  which  may 
leave  us  absolutely  at  the  discretion  of  the 
enemy."  "If  not  a  moment  should  be  lost," 


212     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

he  pleads,  "  the  recruits  will  hardly  join  the 
army  before  the  month  of  April.  .  .  .  My 
anxiety  on  the  subject  is  extreme."  Neverthe- 
less, it  was  not  till  the  9th  of  February  (1780) 
that  Congress  passed  an  act  making  the  de- 
sired requisitions.  The  British  had  then  trans- 
ferred their  principal  forces  and  important 
operations  to  the  South,  and  beginning  what 
proved  to  be  an  absolute  subjugation  of  Geor- 
gia and  South  Carolina  -for  many  months. 
Practically  there  was  nothing  but  the  Southern 
militia  and  the  companies  of  Marion,  Sumter, 
and  other  partisan  leaders,  to  resist  them 
throughout  the  year.  "We  are  now  begin- 
ning," wrote  Washington  at  the  end  of  March 
to  Philip  Schuyler,  "to  experience  the  fatal 
consequences  of  the  policy  which  delayed  call- 
ing upon  the  States  for  their  quotas  of  men. 
.  .  .  What  to  do  for  the  southern  States, 
without  involving  consequences  equally  alarm- 
ing in  this  quarter,  I  know  not." 

Why  prolong  the  dismal  record?  It  grows 
darker  and  darker  to  the  verge  of  the  end. 
The  army  shrinks  steadily ;  when  the  French 
troops  of  Rochambeau  arrive,  the  American 
commander-in-chief  does  not  dare  to  pledge 
himself  to  definite  plans  for  a  cooperative  cam- 


WASHINGTON  213 

paign,  because  he  cannot  foresee  what  forces 
he  will  have.  The  new  men  of  the  army  are 
starved  as  their  predecessors  were,  and  will 
not  endure  it  as  patiently;  hence  formidable 
mutinies,  which  nothing  but  the  impressive 
influence  of  Washington  and  the  firm  attitude 
of  the  strong  officers  who  are  his  faithful 
support  prevent  spreading  to  a  ruinous  re- 
volt. That  is  the  main  tenor  of  the  remaining 
history,  till  French  help  and  British  blunder- 
ing gave  Washington  his  opportunity  to  trap 
Cornwallis  at  Yorktown,  and  substantially  end 
the  war.  Then  came  the  dangerous  issue  be- 
tween a  parsimonious,  fatuous  Congress  and 
an  unpaid,  long-abused  army,  which  threatened 
the  wrecking  of  the  national  cause,  even  after 
it  had  been  won.  Who  but  Washington  could 
have  mediated  with  success  between  the  two, 
and  brought  about  a  peaceful  dissolution  of 
the  forces  in  arms  ?  His  patriotic  service  as  a 
soldier  was  thus  perfected  to  the  last  point  of 
perfection  that  one's  mind  can  conceive. 

At  this  point  let  us  pause  and  put  together 
the  impressions  we  have  taken  from  these 
glimpses  of  the  experience  of  Washington 
as  commander-in-chief  of  the  armies  of  the 
American  Revolution.  For  my  part,  I  am  left 


214     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

with  such  a  sense  of  massiveness  in  charac- 
ter, —  of  massive  and  superlative  strength  in 
The  Uphold-  aluiost  every  moral  element  of  char- 
GMataessoi  ^^ter, —  as  comes  to  me  from  hardly 
Washington,  another  personage  in  history.  It  is  not 
force  in  the  dynamic  sense,  as  we  found  it  ex- 
hibited in  Cromwell  and  Napoleon,  and  as  we 
can  find  it  in  most  of  the  great  soldiers  of  the 
past,  but  strength,  in  its  static  meaning,  —  an 
immutable  upholding  strength,  which  nothing 
can  break  down.  It  is  not  in  a  single  quality, 
or  in  any  group  of  qualities,  but  in  everything 
that  could  be  tributary  to  greatness  of  spirit 
and  moral  solidity  in  a  man.  The  disinter- 
estedness of  his  patriotism ;  the  unfaltering 
steadfastness  of  his  devotion  to  the  duty  that 
he  undertook;  the  equal  faithfulness  of  his 
loyalty  as  a  soldier  to  the  merest  shadows  of 
civil  authority  and  law ;  his  high  magnanimity 
and  generosity  of  soul ;  his  constancy ;  his 
fortitude;  his  courage;  his  self-mastery  of 
powerful  passions;  his  dutiful  patience;  his 
self-respecting  dignity, —  they  are  all  big  in 
the  scale,  beyond  the  largest  common  mea- 
sure, when  we  weigh  them  together  and  at- 
tempt some  conception  of  the  singular  gran- 
deur of  the  character  that  they  formed. 


WASHINGTON  215 

I  do  not  know  another  that  is  quite  so  im- 
pressive in  its  kind.  I  do  not  know  another 
that  stands  in  quite  the  same  relation  to  a 
great  national  cause.  For  nothing  can  be 
plainer  than  the  fact  that  Washington  won 
the  independence  of  the  American  States,  not 
so  much  by  what  he  did  as  by  what  he  was. 
Thereby  he  became,  in  a  certain  degree  and  a 
certain  way,  a  substitute  for  some  of  the  cen- 
tralizing and  inspiriting  influences  which  the 
country  had  no  organization  of  real  govern- 
ment to  generate  or  exert.  Its  trust  was  in 
him.  He  was  the  focus  and  his  example  was 
the  inspiration  of  most  of  the  public  spirit 
that  was  kept  alive  to  the  end.  Who  but  he 
could  have  retained  or  obtained  any  army 
after  the  first  years,  without  sweeping  aside 
the  incapable  Congress  which  abused  its  pa- 
tience and  crippled  its  work?  Who  else  in 
his  place  would  have  paid  the  long-suffering 
deference  and  respect  to  that  effigy  of  gov- 
ernment which  he  rendered,  with  republican 
fidelity,  for  eight  years  ? 

If  Washington  had  been  as  weak  in  po- 
litical principle  as  Cromwell,  who  can  doubt 
that  there  would  have  been  "purgings"  at 
Philadelphia,  and  a  military  dictatorship,  and 


216     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

very  likely  a  crowned  head  for  the  new 
American  nation?  The  thought  of  such  a 
treason  to  the  young  republic  was  abhor- 
rent to  the  true-hearted  Virginian,  aristocrat 
as  he  may  seem  to  have  been.  He  repelled 
the  suggestion  with  angry  rebuke  when  it 
came  to  him  from  some  of  his  officers  in  the 
last  year  of  the  war.  "I  am  much  at  a  loss," 
he  wrote,  "  to  conceive  what  part  of  my  con- 
duct could  have  given  encouragement  to  an 
address  which  to  me  seems  big  with  the  great- 
est mischiefs  that  can  befall  my  country." 
Later,  in  the  midst  of  the  political  distractions 
which  followed  peace,  talk  of  a  monarchy 
reached  Washington  in  his  retirement,  and  he 
wrote  with  anxiety  to  Jay :  "  I  am  told  that 
even  respectable  characters  speak  of  a  mo- 
narchical form  of  government  without  horror. 
From  thinking  proceeds  speaking ;  thence  to 
acting  is  often  but  a  single  step.  But  how  ir- 
revocable and  tremendous  !  .  .  .Would  to  God 
that  wise  measures  may  be  taken  in  time  to 
avert  the  consequences  we  have  but  too  much 
reason  to  apprehend."  Yet,  if  a  throne  was 
erected,  who  but  Washington  could  be  thought 
of  for  king  ?  Of  course,  he  knew  it  to  be  so  ; 
but  the  knowledge  bore  no  slightest  tempta- 
tion to  his  mind. 


WASHINGTON  217 

I  am  not  sure  that  the  greatest  service  of 
Washington  to  his  country  was  not  that  which 
he  rendered  as  the  first  and  most  his  Final 
trusted  of  its  citizens,  when  the  work  service. 
of  the  soldier  was  finished,  and  the  fruits  of 
the  independence  he  had  won  were  in  rapid 
and  total  decay,  because  of  the  want  of  any 
frame  of  substantial  nationality,  —  any  gov- 
ernment to  command  respect,  —  to  fulfill  obli- 
gations,—  to  harmonize  and  promote  public 
interests,  —  to  preserve  public  order  and 
peace.  In  that  dreadful  interval  of  five  years, 
between  the  peace  with  Great  Britain  and  the 
adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution,  when 
local  jealousies,  petty  reckonings  of  self-in- 
terest and  a  foolish  dread  of  all  centralized 
power  in  government  were  combining  to  wreck 
the  American  experiment  of  a  federated  re- 
public, the  most  powerful  of  all  reasonable  in- 
fluences in  the  country  was  that  of  the  known 
opinions  of  Washington.  In  private  corre- 
spondence and  in  the  few  public  addresses 
that  he  found  occasion  to  make,  he  lost  no 
opportunity  to  plead  for  a  constitution  "  that 
will,"  as  he  described  his  conception  of  it, 
"  give  consistency,  stability,  and  dignity  to  the 
Union,  and  sufficient  powers  to  the  great  coun- 


218     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

cil  of  the  nation  for  general  purposes."  It 
was  the  subject  of  most  urgency  in  a  circular 
letter  which  he  addressed  to  the  governors  of 
all  the  States,  in  June,  1783,  when  preparing 
to  disband  the  army ;  it  was  in  his  farewell 
orders  to  the  armies,  in  the  following  Novem- 
ber ;  and  we  find  it  in  every  letter  that  he 
wrote  to  men  of  weight  in  different  parts  of 
the  country  during  the  next  five  years. 

Meantime  he  was  leading  the  undertaking 
of  Virginia  to  open  trade  routes  between  the 
tributaries  of  the  Ohio  and  the  Potomac  and 
the  James,  as  a  means  of  binding  the  western 
country  to  the  east,  out  of  which  sprang  larger 
movements  of  commercial  cooperation,  result- 
ing finally  in  the  call  of  the  immortal  con- 
vention which  framed  the  Federal  Constitution 
of  the  United  States.  The  fact  that  Washing- 
ton would  accept  a  seat  in  that  convention 
was  the  decisive  fact  which  secured  the  ap- 
pointment of  delegates  from  every  State  ex- 
cept Rhode  Island;  it  was  Washington's  presi- 
dency of  the  convention  that  overcame  its 
disagreements  and  averted  failure  in  its  work ; 
and  it  is  not  possible  to  believe  that  the  people 
would  have  given  their  consent  to  the  much 
distrusted  experiment  of  government  under 


WASHINGTON  219 

the  proposed  constitution  if  they  had  not  ex- 
pected Washington  to  preside  in  the  trial  of 
it  and  inaugurate  the  exercise  of  its  executive 
powers.  It  was  the  trust  in  him  —  in  his  wis- 
dom, in  his  fidelity  to  the  whole  people,  in  the 
purity  of  his  patriotism,  and  in  the  single- 
minded  honesty  of  every  motive  in  his  nature 
—  that  had  potency  above  all  other  influences 
in  rescuing  the  country  from  that  slough  of 
faction  and  folly  into  which  the  old  nerveless 
Confederation  had  allowed  it  to  sink.  Then, 
by  the  dignity,  the  firmness,  the  discreetness, 
and  the  soundness  of  principle  in  his  adminis- 
tration, especially  in  the  great  measures  which 
Hamilton  conceived  and  Washington  sus- 
tained, he  established  the  new  Union  on  bases 
of  enough  solidity  to  resist  the  shocks  of  party 
warfare  which  put  it  quickly  to  the  test. 

Washington's  value  to  the  country  in  these 
periods  of  his  public  life  was  as  measureless 
as  in  the  period  of  his  military  com-  incompar- 
mand,  and  it  was  derived  from  the  pa^^erSwa 
same  combination  of  moral  and  intel-  country." 
lectual  qualities  which  gave  him  a  unique 
greatness  of  upholding  strength.  When  we 
call  him  the  Father  of  his  Country  we  are 
using  what  is  hardly  a  figure  of  speech.  His 


220     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

relations  to  its  birth  and  its  youth  were  pater- 
nal in  very  fact.  He  truly  gave  it  a  national 
existence ;  he  was  looked  to  while  he  lived,  as 
a  child  looks  to  its  parent,  for  guardianship, 
guiding  wisdom,  protecting  care.  In  all  his- 
tory I  find  nothing  that  parallels  the  preemi- 
nence of  his  standing  in  the  life  of  a  great 
nation,  and  nothing  in  greatness  of  character 
that  is  quite  like  his. 


LINCOLN:  SIMPLEST  IN 
GEBATNESS 


LINCOLN  :  SIMPLEST  IN  GREATNESS 

In  what  may  be  called  the  accidents  of  their 
lives  and  the  non-essentials  of  their  person- 
ality, Washington  and  Lincoln,  the  two  su- 
premely great  men  in  American  history,  are 
strikingly  and  strangely  contrasted.  So  far 
as  there  have  been  patrician  and  plebeian  dis- 
tinctions in  our  society,  Washington,  born  to 
the  comfortable  circumstances  and  considerable 
refinements  of  planter  life  in  colonial  Virginia, 
is  representative  of  one  class,  while  Lincoln, 
child  of  pioneering  poverty  in  the  first  settle- 
ments of  the  early  West,  will  stand  for  the 
other.  But  there  was  no  heredity  of  caste  in 
Lincoln's  apparent;  plebeianism.  The  old  no- 
tion that  he  sprang  from  the  social  substratum 
of  chronically  "poor  whites"  at  the  South 
has  been  proved  to  be  wholly  false.  His  fam- 
ily stock  was  as  good  in  origin  and  as  thriv- 
ing generally  as  any;  but  something  of  ill- 
fortune  and  something  of  ill-thrift  appear  to 
have  combined  in  making  his  father  a  poorer 
man  than  others  of  the  name  and  kin. 


224     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

Thomas  Lincoln,  the  father,  was  one  of  the 
never  prosperous  migrants  of  his  time,  who 
The  Early  pushed  his  family  farther  and  farther 
theFufure  ^^  the  roughest  edges  of  civilization  ; 
^^'  from  Kentucky  to  Indiana  and  from 

Indiana  to  Illinois.  Hence  the  son,  Abraham, 
had  his  breeding  in  circumstances  as  rude,  as 
rigorous,  as  bare,  as  toilsome,  but  as  whole- 
some in  many  respects,  as  have  ever  been 
found  in  American  life.  Of  teaching  in  school 
he  could  sum  up  hardly  more  than  a  total  of 
six  months,  when  he  referred  to  it  in  after 
years.  It  started  him  in  reading,  writing,  ci- 
phering, and  that  was  enough.  Absolutely  it 
was  enough;  for  a  man  more  perfectly  edu- 
cated than  Abraham  Lincoln,  in  the  true  mean- 
ing of  education,  did  not  exist  in  the  world, 
when  the  time  came  for  his  doing  of  great 
work.  He  had  perfected  his  powers,  and  the 
simple  story  of  the  simple  methods  of  self -cul- 
ture and  self-training  by  which  he  was  nature- 
led  to  that  perfect  result  holds  the  whole  phi- 
losophy of  education.  It  affords,  too,  a  more 
distinct  revelation  of  the  mind  that  was  to 
grow  in  the  man  from  the  mind  of  the  boy 
than  I  know  of  in  any  other  case  of  kindred 
intellectual  gifts. 


LINCOLN  225 

The  significance  of  the  story  is  not  in  what 
it  tells  of  difficulties  and  wants.  That  books 
of  any  kind  came  rarely  within  reach  of  Lin- 
coln as  a  boy ;  that  he  borrowed  far  and  near 
whatever  he  could  obtain;  that  he  made  long 
extracts  from  his  borrowed  books,  and  so  ac- 
quired something  of  a  manuscript  library;  that 
he  wrote  on  boards  when  paper  was  lacking, 
and  re  -  copied  later ;  that  a  freshly  shaved 
wooden  shovel  and  a  charred  stick  were  his 
substitutes  for  slate  and  pencil;  that  spice- 
wood  bushes  and  a  cooper's  shavings  gave  him 
light  for  his  evening  studies, — these  are  ex- 
periences of  hardship  such  as  many  self-taught 
men  have  gone  through.  Lincoln's  self-edu- 
cation was  distinguished  from  that  of  most 
others  by  the  remarkable  exercising  that  went 
with  the  feeding  of  his  mind,  to  produce  as- 
similation in  the  most  perfect  degree.  His  in- 
tellectual nature  was  fastidious  from  the  first 
and  exacting  in  its  demands.  It  would  accept 
no  indefiniteness  in  knowledge  and  no  indis- 
tinctness of  ideas.  What  he  knew  and  what 
he  thought  must  be  absolutely  clarified  in  his 
mind.  If  it  did  not  come  to  him  so  from  an- 
other mind,  in  talk  or  book,  he  must  make  it 
so,  in  language  and  thinking  of  his  own.  This 


226     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

mental  characteristic  was  manifested  in  the 
earliest  childhood  that  his  memory  recalled  in 
after  life.  He  said  once,  in  a  conversation:  "I 
remember  how,  when  a  mere  child,  I  used  to 
get  irritated  when  anybody  talked  to  me  in  a 
way  I  could  not  understand.  I  do  not  think  I 
ever  got  angry  at  anything  else  in  my  life; 
but  that  always  disturbed  my  temper,  and  has 
ever  since.  ...  I  can  remember  going  to  my 
little  bedroom,  after  hearing  the  neighbors 
talk  of  an  evening  with  my  father,  and  spend- 
ing no  small  part  of  the  night  walking  up  and 
down,  trying  to  make  out  what  was  the  exact 
meaning  of  some  of  their,  to  me,  dark  sayings. 
I  could  not  sleep,  although  I  tried  to,  when  I 
got  on  such  a  hunt  for  an  idea,  until  I  had 
caught  it;  and  when  I  thought  I  had  got  it  I 
was  not  satisfied  until  I  had  repeated  it  over 
and  over ;  until  I  had  put  it  in  language  plain 
enough,  as  I  thought,  for  any  boy  to  compre- 
hend. This  was  a  kind  of  passion  with  me, 
and  it  has  stuck  by  me ;  for  I  am  never  easy 
now,  when  I  am  handling  a  thought,  till  I 
have  bounded  it  north  and  bounded  it  south, 
and  bounded  it  east  and  bounded  it  west." 

Now,  there  we  see  Abraham  Lincoln  in  the 
making,  intellectually.  There  we  see  the  fash- 


LINCOLN  227 

ioning  of  the  mind  that  dealt  with  the  tre- 
mendous problems  of  the  Civil  War;  that  pro- 
duced the  great  state  papers  of  the  great  pres- 
idency ;  that  won  the  faith  and  following  of 
the  nation  through  years  of  awful  trial  by  its 
simple,  persuasive  wisdom.  A  mind  luminous, 
absorbent,  strong  by  nature,  was  clarified  and 
strengthened  to  perfection  by  the  cultivation 
of  right  habits  of  exercise  with  lifelong  labo- 
rious care. 

There  is  a  moral  revelation,  too,  of  Lincoln, 
in  this  disclosure  of  his  early  processes  of 
thought.  It  shows  the  truest  kind  of  honesty 
that  can  exist  in  a  man,  —  the  fundamental 
rectitude  of  mind.  That  constitution  of  mind 
which  must,  by  its  own  compulsion,  work 
straightly  and  accurately  and  completely  to 
the  end  of  its  thinking,  always;  which  can 
suffer  no  dallying,  or  carelessness,  or  indiffer- 
ence, in  its  processes,  or  endure  any  dimness 
of  light  in  its  chambers;  which  is  driven  by 
a  goad  of  nature  to  find  the  verity  in  what- 
ever it  seeks,  and  to  be  content  with  nothing 
else;  —  it  is  in  that  make  of  mind  that  all 
rectitude  has  its  natural  and  only  sure  seat. 
Moral  movements  of  feeling  —  leadings  of  con- 
science —  may  be  potent  in  others,  but  never 


228     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

with  the  unfailing  certainty  of  uprightness 
found  here. 

Into  a  rare  and  wonderful  alliance  with  this 
logical  rectitude  of  thought  came  the  humor- 
ous imagination  which  warmed  and  genialized 
Lincoln's  mind.  It  lent  the  magic  touch  which 
transforms  talent  into  genius.  It  doubled  the 
sources  of  illumination  to  his  thinking  and 
speaking,  by  adding  parable  and  allegory  to 
argument,  — suggestive  illustration  to  rational 
deduction.  It  was  a  dramatic  imagination, 
which  actualized  ideas,  in  parabolic  anecdotes 
and  stories,  instead  of  imaging  them  in  meta- 
phors, as  the  poet  does.  It  contributed  some 
large  part  to  a  great  gift  of  power  for  the  just 
persuasion  and  right  leading  of  men,  such  as 
few  in  all  history  have  possessed.  In  this,  too, 
as  in  the  other  part  of  that  wonderful  gift,  the 
great  man  of  history  was  foreshadowed  in  the 
roughly  bred  boy  of  the  pioneer's  cabin.  The 
gift  was  never  hidden  in  a  napkin  to  rust. 
Boy  and  man,  Lincoln  was  always  eager  to 
give  out  to  others  what  he  found  in  his  own 
mind.  From  childhood  he  was  the  central 
talker,  story-teller,  speech-maker  of  his  circle, 
and  always  its  intellectual  leader.  One  com- 
rade of  his  boyhood,  who  is  quoted  by  Miss 


LINCOLN  229 

Tarbell  in  her  biography,  relates  that  "when 
he  appeared  in  company  the  boys  would  gather 
and  cluster  around  him  to  hear  him  talk. 
.  .  .  He  argued  much  from  analogy,  and  ex- 
plained things  hard  for  us  to  understand  by 
stories,  maxims,  tales  and  figures.  He  would 
almost  always  point  his  lesson  or  idea  by  some 
story  that  was  plain  and  near  to  us,  that  we 
might  instantly  see  the  force  and  bearing  of 
what  he  said."  The  child,  we  see,  was  training 
all  his  powers  for  what  the  man  would  have 
to  do. 

In  the  feeding  of  such  a  mind  as  that  of 
Lincoln,  neither  the  number  nor  the  kind  of 
available  books  mattered  greatly.  The  meats 
that  came  to  it  were  so  masticated  and  di- 
gested that  whatever  was  real  in  substance 
sufficed.  When,  at  eighteen,  he  found  a  vol- 
ume of  the  Revised  Statutes  of  Indiana,  con- 
taining, furthermore,  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, the  Ordinance  of  1787,  and  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States,  it  gave  him 
more  than  a  library  of  standard  literature 
would  give  to  the  ordinary  studious  boy.  Its 
juiceless  desiccations  of  law,  history,  political 
philosophy,  social  economy,  were  all  dissolved 
in  that  digestive  intellect  of  his,  and  went  to 


230     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

the  making  and  nourishing  of  idfeas  that  were 
fundamental  in  his  future  thinking  and  belief. 
But  the  importance  of  books  in  Lincoln's 
education  was  not  so  supreme  as  it  is  com- 
monly made.  He  craved  them,  and  drew  from 
them  richly ;  but  he  craved  still  more  the  stim- 
ulus, the  suggestion,  the  information,  the  ex- 
pansion that  he  could  get  from  talk  with  men. 
Perhaps  he  owed  more  of  the  perfect  evolution 
and  training  of  his  peculiar  powers  to  that 
wide  intimacy  of  intercourse  with  his  fellows 
which  he  sought  continually,  than  he  owed  to 
books.  Certainly  it  prepared  him,  as  nothing 
else  could  have  done,  for  the  great  work  he  was 
destined  to  do.  He  was  to  touch  the  minds 
and  hearts  of  millions,  win  their  faith  and 
their  love,  guide  them,  lead  them,  by  their  rea- 
son and  by  their  feeling  alike,  and  he  came  to 
that  mission  prepared  for  it  by  a  sympathetic 
acquaintance  with  men,  apart  and  together,  in 
their  personal  and  their  multitudinous  char- 
acter, such  as  few  have  ever  had.  The  un- 
conventional, democratic  society  of  the  Young 
West,  in  his  young  manhood  and  middle  life, 
shuffled  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  people  con- 
stantly into  the  public  gatherings  that  he  liked 
to  join,  —  on  the  street —  at  the  country  post- 


LINCOLN  231 

office  and  store*-*- in  and  around  the  court- 
house—  by  the  tavern  fire  in  court  -  circuit 
times.  He  centred  such  knots  of  talkers  and 
listeners  around  himself,  as  Socrates,  in  the 
old  days  of  the  Athenian  free  democracy,  was 
wont  to  do.  And  how  like  Socrates  he  was,  in 
his  personal  homeliness,  in  the  self-forgotten 
carelessness  of  his  manner  and  dress,  and  in 
the  quality  of  his  mind !  Socrates  had  little 
humor  for  the  tingeing  of  his  genius,  and  Lin- 
coln had  much;  but  otherwise  the  ancient 
Greek  and  the  modern  American  were  men  of 
singular  likeness  in  kind.  There  was  no  at- 
mosphere of  philosophy  in  the  Illinois  of  his 
day  to  turn  Lincoln's  thought  to  such  ethical 
problems  as  Socrates  delighted  to  discuss;  but 
he  dealt  with  questions  of  right  and  wrong 
that  were  practical  and  urgent  in  the  politics 
of  his  time  and  country,  as  Socrates  dealt 
with  abstract  conceptions  of  virtue;  by  prob- 
ing processes,  that  is,  which  led  to  the  same 
result.  It  is  not  likely  that  he  ever  read  a 
translation  of  the  dialogues  of  Plato;  but  he 
had  quite  the  Socratic  method  of  analytic  ar- 
gument, and  exposed  the  fallacies  of  Douglas 
as  Socrates,  if  his  dialogue  were  turned  into 
monologue,  would   have  riddled  the  sophis- 


232     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

tries  of  Gorglas  and  Protagoras.  They  had 
kindred  minds  and  were  kindred  spirits;  alike 
in  intellectual  honesty;  alike  intolerant  of 
half -thinking ;  alike  scornful  of  trickish  and 
evasive  minds ;  alike  in  all  greatness  of  soul. 

For  Lincoln's  genius  and  character  the  tru- 
est field  that  could  have  opened  was  that  in 
0  eniMoi  ^'^^rican  politics,  as  he  found  it  on 
hisPouticai  reachino^  manhood,  in  the  fourth  dec- 

Oareer.  ® 

ade  of  the  last  century,  when  imperi- 
ous moral  issues,  raised  by  the  aggressions  of  the 
slaveholding  interest,  were  beginning  to  drive 
economic  questions  out  of  the  public  mind.  The 
political  field  invited  him  so  early,  and  he  was 
so  frankly  ambitious  to  enter  it,  with  such  a 
consciousness  of  his  ability  for  it,  that  when  he 
had  just  reached  the  age  of  twenty-three  he  an- 
nounced himself  a  candidate  for  the  general  as- 
sembly of  Illinois.  Offering  himself  as  a  Whig, 
in  a  district  that  was  overwhelmingly  Demo- 
cratic, he  experienced  defeat,  but  obtained,  at 
the  same  time,  the  first  of  many  proofs  that  were 
to  be  given  him  of  his  singular  attractiveness 
to  the  people  who  knew  him  best.  In  the  little 
town  of  New  Salem,  where  he  had  lived  a 
single  year,  he  received  all  but  23  of  the  votes 
cast,  being  277  out  of  a  total  300.  Two  years 


LINCOLN  233 

later  he  repeated  his  candidacy,  with  success, 
and  for  eight  years  thereafter,  from  1834  till 
1842,  he  represented  his  district  in  the  lower 
branch  of  the  legislature  of  the  State. 

At  about  the  same  time  he  began  the  study 
of  law.  Hitherto  his  work  had  been  mostly 
in  occupations  of  manual  labor, — in  farming, 
rail-splitting,  flat-boating  to  and  from  New 
Orleans,  with  some  clerking  in  a  country  store. 
His  first  undertaking  of  what  can  be  called 
skilled  labor  was  in  the  office  of  deputy  county 
surveyor,  for  which,  on  the  unsought  offer  of 
it,  he  quahfied  himself  by  six  weeks  of  intense 
study,  night  and  day.  This  preceded  his  study 
of  law  by  a  few  months,  and  his  practice  of  sur- 
veying supported  him  till  he  had  won  admis- 
sion to  the  bar  and  a  living  income  from  the 
law.  He  dropped  it  in  1837,  when  he  removed 
from  New  Salem  to  the  larger  neighboring 
town  of  Springfield,  which  he,  by  his  influ- 
ence in  the  legislature,  had  been  instrumental 
in  making  the  capital  of  the  State.  From  that 
time,  law  and  politics  were  rival  interests  in 
his  life,  with  the  great  public  questions  of  the 
time  always  strongest  in  their  appeal. 

His  mind  was  never  stirred  very  deeply  by 
party  contentions  over  national  banks,  tariffs, 


234     A   STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

and  internal  improvements,  on  which  he  sided 
with  Henry  Clay ;  but  a  righteous  indigna- 
tion, which  represented  everything  of  bitter- 
ness that  his  reasonable  nature  could  feel,  was 
wakened  quickly  when  the  champions  of  slav- 
ery made  claims  and  aggressions  beyond  its 
constitutional  rights.  He  hated  the  institution, 
as  his  father  and  mother  had  hated  it ;  but  he 
respected  the  obligations  of  the  national  con- 
tract of  Union  too  profoundly  to  lend  coun- 
tenance to  any  attack  on  slavery  within  its 
legalized  domain.  He  repudiated  the  doctrines 
of  the  abolitionists  in  so  far  as  they  repudi- 
ated the  binding  law  of  the  Constitution ;  but 
when  the  Illinois  assembly,  in  1837,  adopted 
resolutions  disapproving  of  those  doctrines 
and  condemning  the  formation  of  abolition 
societies,  he  was  one  of  two  members  who  pro- 
tested against  the  resolutions,  because  they  did 
not,  at  the  same  time,  condemn  slavery  as  an 
institution,  and  because  they  denied  the  con- 
stitutional power  of  Congress  to  abolish  it  in 
the  District  of  Columbia. 

This  was  his  lifelong  stand  on  all  questions 
touching  slavery  that  came  up :  unyielding 
resistance  to  every  claim  for  it  beyond  the 
legal  rights  conceded  to  it  clearly  in  the  Con- 


LINCOLN  235 

stitution  ;  unfailing  respect  for  those.  As  early 
as  1845  he  defined  for  himself  the  future  plat- 
form of  the  Republican  party,  in  a  letter  which 
he  wrote  to  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  "  Lib- 
erty party "  that  was  then  taking  form.  "  I 
hold  it  to  be  a  paramount  duty  of  us  in  the 
Free  States,"  he  wrote,  "due  to  the  Union  of 
the  States,  and  perhaps  to  liberty  itself  (para- 
dox though  it  may  seem)  to  let  the  slavery  of 
the  other  States  alone;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  I  hold  it  to  be  equally  clear  that  we 
should  never  knowingly  lend  ourselves,  di- 
rectly or  indirectly,  to  prevent  that  slavery 
from  dying  a  natural  death,  —  to  find  new 
places  for  it  to  live  in  when  it  can  no  longer 
exist  in  the  old." 

For  twelve  years  after  quitting  the  Illinois 
legislature,  in  1842,  Lincoln  went  deeply  into 
politics  but  once,  when  he  served  his  district 
in  Congress  for  a  single  term  (1847-49).  The 
time  was  that  of  the  Mexican  War,  and  Lin- 
coln's skill  in  exposition  was  brought  to  use 
in  illuminating  the  iniquitous  claims  and  false 
pretenses  that  brought  the  war  about.  At  the 
same  time  he  gave  his  vote  for  supplying  the 
means  that  were  needful  to  the  prosecution 
of  the  war.  He  branded  the  iniquity  of  the 


236     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

government  which  had  dragged  the  country 
into  an  unrighteous  attack  on  a  weaker  neigh- 
bor, but  he  would  not  help  to  cripple  the  army 
which  obeyed,  as  it  must,  that  government's 
command.  It  was  the  morally  patriotic  course, 
which  every  conscientious  American  of  our 
time  who  studies  the  circumstances  of  the 
Mexican  War  has  to  approve.  In  its  day,  how- 
ever, it  was  an  unpopular  course  in  many  parts 
of  the  country,  and  Lincoln  may  not  have 
seen  encouragement  in  his  district  to  accept 
the  Whig  nomination  for  another  term.  There 
were,  however,  other  reasons  given  for  his  re- 
tirement from  Congress,  after  a  service  that 
was  too  brief  for  any  lasting  reputation  to  be 
made  in  it. 

On  quitting  Washington,  in  the  spring  of 
1849,  Lincoln  believed  that  he  was  quitting 
Roused  Dy  political  life,  and  he  devoted  himself 
tie  Repeal  to  his  profcssiou  for  the  next  five 
souricom-  ycars.  Then  came,  in  1854,  the  pas- 
prom  se.  g^^^  ^£  ^1^^  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill,  re- 
pealing the  Missouri  Compromise  of  1820, 
opening  to  slavery  the  great  region  from  which 
that  act  had  barred  it,  and  establishing  what 
Senator  Douglas,  the  author  of  the  bill,  called 
the  principle  of  "popular  sovereignty,"  to  wit, 


LINCOLN  237 

"that  all  questions  pertaining  to  slavery  in  the 
Territories,  and  the  new  States  to  be  formed 
therefrom,  are  to  be  left  to  the  people  resid- 
ing therein."  Everything  in  Lincoln's  nature, 
reason  and  feeling,  moral  sense  and  political 
judgment  alike,  sprang  to  instant  revolt  against 
this  breach  of  a  compact  which,  during  half 
the  life  of  the  nation,  had  been  established 
among  the  bonds  of  its  federal  union.  He 
could  not  keep  himself  out  of  the  thickest  of 
the  political  battle  which  opened  then,  or  be 
anywhere  in  it  save  far  forward  in  the  front ; 
for  no  other  man  entered  it  with  such  powers 
as  his,  so  wrought  to  their  utmost  pitch. 

It  was  then  that  the  surpassing  quality  and 
measure  of  the  man  began  to  be  revealed,  even 
to  the  closest  of  his  long-admiring  friends,  and 
possibly  even  to  himself.  It  began  to  be  seen 
that  his  speeches  were  something  more  than 
beyond  the  common,  —  that  they  were  mas- 
terpieces of  argumentative  oratory.  We  have 
one  of  them  well  reported,  from  the  first  en- 
counters that  occurred  between  Lincoln  and 
Douglas,  on  the  new  political  issue,  in  1854. 
It  was  delivered  at  Peoria,  in  October,  in  reply 
to  a  speech  made  by  Douglas  on  the  previous 
day.   To  me  it  seems  the  most  perfect,  the 


238     A  STUDY   OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

most  powerful,  of  Lincoln's  speeches ;  partly, 
perhaps,  for  the  reason  that  his  first  presenta- 
tion of  many  views  and  his  first  expression  of 
many  thoughts  which  came,  necessarily,  again 
and  again,  into  the  discussions  of  the  next 
years,  are  found  in  this  address.  I  am  bold 
enough  to  go  further,  and  say  that  a  more 
perfect  political  argument  never  came  from  an 
English-speaking  tongue,  if,  indeed,  from  any 
other.  The  perfection  of  it  is  equally  in  the 
logic  and  the  temper,  the  warmth  and  the  can- 
dor, the  searchingness  and  the  simplicity,  the 
large  plan  and  the  exquisite  workmanship,  the 
satisfying  completeness  of  the  whole  and  of 
every  part.  There  are  no  surprising  splendors, 
—  no  bursts  of  eloquence,  —  no  crimson  and 
purple  patches  in  the  speech,  such  as  Burke 
or  Webster  might  have  thrilled  us  with  ;  but 
the  pure  crystal  of  it  wants  no  coloring, — 
needs  nothing  but  the  glow  of  the  light  that 
fills  it  full. 

With  all  of  Lincoln's  fervid  feeling  at  the 
time  there  is  not  the  least  acrimony  in  the 
sympathetic  specch ;  nothing  of  the  acidity,  for 
wMdtte°"  example,  that  runs,  with  little  dashes 
South.  Qf  courteous  sweetening  now  and  then, 
through  Webster's  reply  to  Hayne.  Toward 


LINCOLN  239 

the  South  he  felt  kindly  and  sympathetic,  as 
he  never  ceased  to  feel. 

"  I  think,"  he  said  quietly,  "  I  have  no  pre- 
judice against  the  Southern  people.  They  are 
just  what  we  would  be  in  their  situation.  If 
slavery  did  not  now  exist  among  them  they 
would  not  introduce  it.  If  it  did  now  exist 
among  us  we  should  not  instantly  give  it  up. 
This  I  believe  of  the  masses  North  and  South. 
.  .  .  When  Southern  people  tell  us  they  are 
no  more  responsible  for  the  origin  of  slavery 
than  we  are,  I  acknowledge  the  fact.  When 
it  is  said  that  the  institution  exists  and  that  it 
is  very  difficult  to  get  rid  of  it  in  any  satisfac- 
tory way,  I  can  understand  and  appreciate  the 
saying.  I  surely  shall  not  blame  them  for  not 
doing  what  I  should  not  know  how  to  do  my- 
self. If  all  earthly  power  were  given  me,  I 
should  not  know  what  to  do  as  to  the  existing 
institution.  My  first  impulse  would  be  to  free 
all  the  slaves,  and  send  them  to  Liberia,  to 
their  own  native  land.  But  a  moment's  reflec- 
tion would  convince  me  that  whatever  of  high 
hope  (as  I  think  there  is)  there  may  be  in  this, 
in  the  long  run,  its  sudden  execution  is  im- 
possible. If  they  were  all  landed  there  in  a 
day,  they  would  all  perish  in  the  next  ten  days; 


240     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

and  there  are  not  surplus  shipping  and  surplus 
money  enough  to  carry  them  there  in  many 
times  ten  days.  What  then  ?  Free  them  all 
and  keep  them  among  us  as  underlings  ?  Is 
it  quite  certain  that  this  betters  their  condi- 
tion ?  I  think  I  would  not  hold  one  in  slavery, 
at  any  rate ;  yet  the  point  is  not  clear  enough 
for  me  to  denounce  people  upon.  What  next? 
Free  them,  and  make  them  politically  and 
socially  our  equals  ?  My  own  feelings  will  not 
admit  of  this,  and,  if  mine  would,  we  well 
know  that  those  of  the  great  mass  of  whites 
will  not.  Whether  this  feeling  accords  with 
justice  and  sound  judgment  is  not  the  sole 
question,  if,  indeed,  it  is  any  part  of  it.  A 
universal  feeling,  whether  well-  or  ill-founded, 
cannot  be  safely  disregarded.  We  cannot,  then, 
make  them  equals.  It  does  seem  to  me  that 
systems  of  gradual  emancipation  might  be 
adopted  ;  but  for  their  tardiness  in  this  I  will 
not  undertake  to  judge  our  brethren  of  the 
South. 

"  When  they  remind  us  of  their  constitu- 
tional rights,  I  acknowledge  them,  not  grudg- 
ingly, but  fully  and  fairly ;  and  I  would  give 
them  any  legislation  for  the  reclaiming  of 
their  fugitives  which  should  not,  in  its  strin- 


LINCOLN  241 

gency,  be  more  likely  to  carry  a  free  man  into 
slavery  than  our  ordinary  criminal  laws  are  to 
hang  an  innocent  one. 

"  But  all  this,  to  my  judgment,  furnishes 
no  more  excuse  for  permitting  slavery  to  go 
into  our  own  free  territory  than  it  would  for 
reviving  the  African  slave  trade  by  law." 

Here,  in  these  few  words  of  frank  state- 
ment, we  can  see  that  the  judgment  and  the 
feeling  which  guided  Lincoln's  whole  treat- 
ment of  slavery,  when  he  had  power  to  deal 
with  it,  was  determined,  distinctly  and  fully 
in  his  mind,  six  years  before  the  power  came 
to  him,  and  that  the  possession  of  the  power 
made  no  slightest  change. 

By  one  more  citation  from  this  pregnant 
speech  of  1854  I  wish  to  show  how  long  the 
basic  line  of  his  statesmanship  as  President 
had  been  prepared  in  his  mind,  before  the  re- 
sponsibilities of  the  crisis  of  the  conflict  with 
slavery  were  laid  upon  him.  "  Nebraska  is 
urged,"  he  said,  "as  a  great  Union-saving 
measure.  Well,  I,  too,  go  for  saving  the  Union. 
Much  as  I  hate  slavery,  I  would  consent  to  the 
extension  of  it  rather  than  see  the  Union  dis- 
solved, just  as  I  would  consent  to  any  great 
evil  to  avoid  a  greater  one.  But  when  I  go  to 


242    A  STUDY   OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

Union-saving  I  must  believe,  at  least,  that  the 
means  I  employ  have  some  adaptation  to  the 
end.  To  my  mind  Nebraska  has  no  such  adap- 
tation. '  It  hath  no  relish  of  salvation  in  it. ' 
It  is  an  aggravation,  rather,  of  the  only  one 
thing  which  ever  endangers  the  Union.  .  .  . 
It  could  not  but  produce  agitation.  Slavery 
is  founded  in  the  selfishness  of  man's  nature, 
—  opposition  to  it  in  his  love  of  justice.  These 
principles  are  in  eternal  antagonism,  and  when 
brought  into  collision,  so  fiercely  as  slavery 
extension  brings  them,  shocks  and  throes  and 
convulsions  must  ceaselessly  follow.  Repeal 
the  Missouri  Compromise,  repeal  all  compro- 
mises, repeal  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
repeal  all  past  history,  you  still  cannot  repeal 
human  nature.  It  still  will  be  the  abundance 
of  man's  heart  that  slavery  extension  is  wrong, 
and  out  of  the  abundance  of  his  heart  his 
mouth  will  speak." 

The  working  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Act, 

in  the  first  application  of  it,  to  Kansas,  was 

what  Lincoln  had  predicted  it  would 

The  Great      i         ci .  n    «  .        . 

Debate  with  be.  Six  years  of  fiery  agitation  and 

°^  *"      conflict  ensued,  in  the  course  of  which 

Douglas  was  driven  to  uphold  his  doctrine  of 

popular  sovereignty  by  rebellion  in  his  own 


LINCOLN  243 

party.  The  old  political  organizations  were 
dissolved.  Anti-slavery  Whigs  and  Democrats 
came  together  and  formed  the  Republican 
party.  Lincoln,  from  the  first,  was  the  recog- 
nized leader  of  the  new  party  in  Illinois,  and 
it  came  near  to  seating  him  at  once  in  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States.  In  1856,  at  the 
national  Republican  convention,  he  was  pro- 
posed for  Vice-President,  on  the  ticket  with 
Fremont,  and  received  the  second  highest 
number  of  votes.  In  1858,  when  Douglas  came 
to  Illinois  for  reelection  to  the  Senate,  Lin- 
coln was  the  candidate  chosen  to  oppose  him. 

Douglas  was  now  the  conspicuous  man  in 
America;  his  fight  for  the  retention  of  his 
seat  in  the  Senate  was  the  exciting  event  of 
the  day,  and  the  joint  debates  to  which  Lin- 
coln challenofed  him  had  the  nation  for  their 
audience.  Reports  of  the  speeches  of  the  an- 
tagonists were  published  far  and  wide  at  the 
time,  and  subsequently  in  a  volume,  of  which 
30,000  copies  were  sold  in  a  few  months. 

Douglas  won  his  reelection  by  aid  from  cer- 
tain of  the  anti-slavery  people,  who  thought 
it  policy  to  send  him  back  to  the  Senate  for 
continued  battle  with  the  Buchanan  adminis- 
tration ;  but  Lincoln  won  the  next  presidency 


244     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

of  the  United  States.  He  won  it  designedly 
for  his  party,  but  unconsciously  for  himself. 
He  had  widened  his  reputation  and  risen  im- 
mensely in  public  esteem,  while  Douglas  came 
out  of  the  encounter  with  serious  wounds. 
One,  especially,  w^as  fatal  to  the  future  career 
of  the  author  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill. 
Lincoln,  by  shrewd  questioning,  had  forced 
him  into  a  deadly  dilemma,  between  offense 
to  the  North  and  offense  to  the  South,  com- 
pelling him  to  maintain  that  the  inhabitants 
of  a  territory,  in  the  exercise  of  their  "  pop- 
ular sovereignty,"  might  keep  slavery  from 
entering  it  by  police  regulations  and  "un- 
friendly legislation,'*  in  the  teeth  of  the  Dred 
Scott  decision,  which  the  Supreme  Court  had 
rendered  a  few  months  before,  and  that  Con- 
gress had  no  constitutional  power  to  interpose. 
This  "  Freeport  doctrine,"  as  it  came  to  be 
called,  pleased  voters  enough  in  Illinois  to 
give  Douglas  his  victory  there,  and  Lincoln 
had  foreseen  that  quite  probable  result  when 
he  planned  to  draw  it  out ;  but  he  met  the 
expostulation  of  friends,  who  warned  him  that 
it  meant  defeat  to  himself,  by  saying :  "  Gen- 
tlemen, I  am  killing  larger  game ;  if  Douglas 
answers,  he  can  never  be  President ;  and  the 


LINCOLN  245 

battle  of  1860  is  worth  a  hundred  of  this." 
It  came  to  pass  as  he  foresaw.  The  Democratic 
party  was  broken  into  sectional  factions  by 
that  "Freeport  doctrine,"  which  Lincoln's 
unselfish  acuteness  had  drawn  into  dispute, 
and  the  triumph  of  the  Republican  party  in 
1860  was  practically  assured. 

It  is  needless  to  dwell  on  the  circumstances 
and  incidents  of  the   next  two  years,  which 
were  shaped,  by  God's  mercy,  to  bring:  . 
about  the  nommation  and  election  of  the  united 
this  now  nationalized  great  man  of 
the  West,  to  be  the  President  of  what  seemed 
to  be  the  dissolving  federation  of  American 
States.    Let  us  come  at  once  to  the  day  when 
he  took  his  heroic  oath  to  "  preserve,  protect 
and  defend  "  a  broken  Constitution,  and  was 
commissioned  to  restore  authority  and  charac- 
ter to  a  government  which  treason  had  be- 
trayed and  feebleness  had  abased. 

It  is  not  easy  to  realize  the  appalling  com- 
plexities of  peril  and  difficulty  that  he  faced 
that  day.  Seven  slaveholding  States  had  then 
passed  ordinances  of  secession  from  the  Union, 
had  withdrawn  their  representatives  from 
Congress,  had  seized  forts,  arsenals,  and  other 
property  of  the  Federal  Government  within 


246     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

their  limits,  and  had  organized  a  new  confed- 
eracy, based  avowedly  on  slavery  as  its  corner 
stone.  In  the  other  slaveholding  States  much 
division  of  opinion  and  feeling  prevailed.  The 
positive  secessionists  in  those  States  were  in  a 
minority ;  but  that  minority  was  sure  of  in- 
stant reinforcement  from  a  greater  body  of 
theoretic  secessionists,  if  the  right  of  secession 
should  be  denied  to  the  States  claiming  it,  and 
if  measures  of  coercion  were  undertaken.  It 
was  sure,  too,  of  further  reinforcement  from 
the  nominal  Unionists  of  those  States,  if  slav- 
ery should  be  touched  by  the  new  administra- 
tion in  a  hostile  way. 

In  the  free  States  there  were  much  the 
same  divisions  of  sentiment,  but  the  propor- 
tions were  reversed.  Unquestionably,  the  posi- 
tive, unconditional  Unionists  were  a  heavy 
majority  from  the  first ;  the  positive  seces- 
sionists, who  would  willingly  have  taken  part 
in  the  wTecking  of  the  Union  (like  Fernando 
Wood,  for  example,  and  other  plotters  of  a 
movement  to  make  New  York  a  "free  city") 
were  an  insignificant  number ;  but,  in  March, 
1861,  there  was  a  really  formidable  body  of 
theoretical  secessionists  in  the  North,  who 
upheld  the  late  President,  Buchanan,  in  his 


LINCOLN  247 

conclusion  that  the  Federal  Government  had 
no  power  to  restrain  a  State  which  saw  fit  to 
secede. 

In  the  border  slave  States  the  conditional 
and  unconditional  Unionists,  together,  had 
strength  enough  to  give  hope  that  they  might, 
if  wisely  aided,  hold  those  States  from  seces- 
sion, even  in  the  event  of  a  conflict  with  the 
rebellious  States.  As  we  look  back  now,  that 
seems  to  have  been  the  sole  substantial  ground 
there  was  for  a  hope  of  success  in  resisting 
the  destruction  of  the  Union.  In  other  words, 
there  appears  now  to  have  been  hardly  a  pos- 
sibility of  success  in  the  war  for  the  Union  if 
the  rebellious  confederacy  had  been  joined  by 
the  border  slave  States.  Quite  as  plainly,  too, 
there  appears  to  have  been  no  possibility  of 
restraining  them  from  that  junction  if  the 
least  disposition  to  attack  slavery  had  been 
shown  by  the  new  administration  in  its  first 
year  of  power ;  and  any  effect  from  that  cause 
which  weakened  Unionism  in  the  border  slave 
States  would  have  strengthened  the  opposition 
to  the  government  in  the  free  States  and  crip- 
pled its  arm. 

Many  who  could  recognize  and  understand 
these  fundamental  facts  of  the  situation  in 


248     A  STUDY   OF  GREATNESS   IN   MEN 

moments  of  thoughtful  reflection  were  quick 
to  forget  them  in  the  heat  of  a  passionate 
desire  for  the  destruction  of  slavery,  as  the 
cause  of  the  war.  It  seemed  to  be  Lincoln 
only  whose  wise,  well-trained  mind  could  hold 
them  always  in  its  thought,  and  never  be  se- 
duced to  forgetfulness  of  them.  He  could  set 
the  compass  of  his  Union-saving  policy  in  ac- 
cord with  them,  and  steer  by  it  unswervingly, 
through  all  the  cross-currents  and  against  all 
the  wayward  winds  of  partisan  passion  and 
conscientious  recklessness  that  shook  the  helm 
under  his  firm,  strong  hand.  Who  but  Abra- 
ham Lincoln,  among  the  public  men  of  that 
time  could  have  done  this  thing  ?  Who  but 
he  could  have  stood  up  against  the  power- 
ful men  and  bodies  of  men  in  his  party  who 
had  more  angry  eagerness  to  strike  at  slavery 
than  faithful  determination  to  save  the  Union, 
—  resisting  them,  baffling  them,  angering 
them,  and  yet  planting  deep  down  in  their 
hearts,  all  the  time,  a  profound  faith  in  him- 
self? Who  else  could  have  stood  between 
Seward  factions.  Chase  factions,  Greeley  fac- 
tions, Cameron  and  anti-Cameron,  Blair  and 
anti-Blair  factions,  and  been  in  friendly  inde- 
pendence of  them  all  ? 


LINCOLN  249 

And  who  but  Lincoln,  at  the  outset  of  his 
administration,  could  have  brought  himself 
and  Seward,  the  most  important  of  Republi- 
can leaders,  into  cordial  and  perfect  coopera- 
tion, after  the  astounding  suggestion  which 
Mr.  Seward,  as  secretary  of  state,  had  made 
to  his  chief,  that  he  (the  secretary)  would 
take  on  himself  the  duties  and  responsibilities 
of  the  head  of  government,  if  the  President 
should  so  desire  ?  To  this  most  offensive  inti- 
mation that  the  President  must  feel  himself 
unfit  for  the  great  office  to  which  he  had  been 
raised,  Mr.  Lincoln  replied  with  a  simple  dig- 
nity and  an  unruf&ed  temper  which  no  spirit 
but  the  loftiest  could  have  shown,  Mr.  Seward, 
on  his  part,  was  high-minded  enough  to  rec- 
ognize his  superior  in  the  man  whose  measure 
he  had  mistaken,  and  two  months  later  he 
wrote  confidentially  to  his  wife,  "  the  President 
is  the  best  of  us."  What  had  passed  between 
the  two  men  was  never  disclosed  till  it  came  to 
light  upon  the  publication  of  the  great  bio- 
graphy and  history  of  Lincoln  by  his  private 
secretaries,  Nicolay  and  Hay.  Its  disclosure 
then  was  just  to  Lincoln,  for  it  is  one  of  the 
most  important  of  the  revelations  of  greatness 
in  his  soul.  That  degree  of  magnanimity,  pro- 


250     A   STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

duct  of  a  devotion  to  impersonal  ends  that 
can  extinguish  every  egoistic  feeling,  is  one 
of  the  rarest  virtues  found  in  men,  and  Lin- 
coln's capacity  for  it  was  never  surpassed.  It 
bore  him  through  countless  sore  dealings  with 
presumptuous,  meddlesome,  petty  statesmen, 
party  magnates,  arrogant  soldiers,  who  were 
slower  than  Mr.  Seward  to  learn  how  master- 
ful a  strength  and  how  profound  a  wisdom 
were  veiled  by  the  unpretending  simplicity 
and  homely  manners  of  the  country  lawyer 
from  Illinois. 

The  question  of  most  urgency  that  waited 
for  his  decision  when  he  came  to  the  presi- 
dency was  that  of  action  in  the  case  of  Fort 
Sumter,  and  it  was  Lincoln's  wise  treatment 
of  that  problem  which  drew  out  of  it  the  im- 
passioned excitement  of  loyal  feeling  which 
solidified  the  North.  Seward  and  one  other, 
at  least,  of  his  cabinet  advisers,  supported  by 
General  Scott,  then  the  head  of  the  army, 
would  have  surrendered  the  fort,  thus  encour- 
aging the  rebellion,  disheartening  loyal  people 
North  and  South,  and  discrediting  the  gov- 
ernment at  home  and  abroad.  Blair,  at  least, 
in  the  Cabinet,  and  some  naval  advisers, 
would  have  precipitated  a  conflict  with  the 


LINCOLN  251 

beleaguering  batteries  of  the  Confederates  at 
Charleston,  by  undertaking  to  reinforce  as 
well  as  provision  the  feeble  garrison  of  the 
fort.  Lincoln  listened  to  all  counselors,  ob- 
tained all  possible  information,  waited,  watch- 
ing and  pondering,  till  the  last  possible  hour 
before  Major  Anderson  and  his  men  must 
have  food,  and  then  sent  a  special  messenger 
to  Charleston,  with  instructions  to  read  the 
following  to  the  governor  of  the  State :  "  I  am 
directed  by  the  President  of  the  United  States 
to  notify  you  to  expect  an  attempt  will  be 
made  to  supply  Fort  Sumter  with  provisions, 
only;  and  that,  if  such  attempt  be  not  resisted, 
no  effort  to  throw  in  men,  arms  or  ammuni- 
tion will  be  made  without  fui-ther  notice,  or 
in  case  of  an  attack  on  the  fort."  In  this  fair 
notification  there  was  no  challenge  or  provo- 
cation of  hostilities;  and  when  the  Confeder- 
ates responded  to  it  by  opening  fire  on  the 
starved  garrison  of  Sumter  they  left  no  ques- 
tion in  any  reasonable  mind  as  to  the  placing 
of  responsibility  for  the  beginning  of  war.  The 
secessionists  had  placed  themselves  too  plainly 
in  the  wrong  for  their  theoretic  partisans  in 
the  free  States  to  uphold  them  any  longer ; 
even  Buchanan  declared  against  them,  while 


252     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

the  potent  voice  of  Douglas  (then  ill,  and  not 
far  from  death)  was  raised  to  rally  his  great 
body  of  followers  to  the  defense  of  the  na- 
tional flag.  Whatever  of  hesitant  or  disloyal 
feeling  there  had  been  in  the  North  was 
beaten  down  by  a  wild  tempest  of  patriotic 
excitement,  and  the  government,  for  a  time, 
was  supported  by  a  practically  solid  North, 
with  a  tremendous  invigoration  of  loyalty  in 
the  border  States. 

The  white  heat  of  excitement  which  pro- 
duced that  emotional  fusion   could  not,  in 
human  nature,  be  maintained.  In  any 

Hislnspir-       .  ,  "^ 

inginiiu-  Circumstances  it  would  have  cooled, 
and  such  circumstances  as  came  very 
soon  —  in  reverses  to  the  national  armies,  and 
in  the  slow  testing,  the  necessarily  slow  test- 
ing of  inexperienced  and  untried  general 
officers,  to  weed  out  the  inefiicient  and  find 
the  men  of  capacity  and  power  —  were  too 
chilling  for  any  fervor  of  enthusiasm  in  a 
whole  people  to  resist.  Complaining  criticism 
was  provoked  inevitably;  and  inevitably  it 
bred  divisions  that  weakened  and  factions  that 
obstructed  the  government  in  its  terrible  task. 
The  wonder  is,  not  that  discontent,  disheart- 
enment,  division,  obstructive  faction  grew  up 


LINCOLN  253 

in  those  dreadful  years  of  civil  war,  but  that 
more  of  every  possible  mischief  to  the  national 
cause  was  not  produced;  that  the  courage  of 
the  loyal  people  was  kept  so  high  as  it  was,  — 
its  resolution  so  firm,  —  its  unity  of  purpose 
and  effort  so  nearly  complete ;  and  it  was  the 
influence  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  beyond  all 
other  influences  combined,  that  kept  it  so.  He 
brought  about,  between  himself,  as  chief  mag- 
istrate, and  the  whole  people,  a  familiar  and 
confidential  relation  such  as  had  not  been 
known  or  dreamed  of  in  government  before. 
Sometimes  formally,  in  ofiicial  documents  and 
addresses,  sometimes  informally,  in  open  let- 
ters to  prominent  personages  or  to  committees 
and  associations,  he  opened  his  mind  to  the 
public,  on  occasions  of  disturbing  controversy 
or  of  depressing  events,  with  a  frankness,  a 
simplicity,  a  warmth  of  feeling,  a  wisdom  of 
judgment  and  a  clearness  and  force  of  reason- 
ing that  were  marvelous  in  the  impression 
they  made.  The  country  found  itself  yielding 
to  the  authority  of  a  master  mind  and  the 
charm  of  a  rare  literary  genius,  long  before  it 
knew  why. 

Such  words  of  tender  feeling  as  those  spoken 
by  the  great  President  at  Gettysburg  and  in 


254     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

his  second  inaugural  address,  which  went  to 
the  hearts  of  the  people,  are  remembered  bet- 
ter than  the  wise  words  that  he  addressed  to 
their  understanding;  but  the  immortal  elo- 
quence of  the  man  is  no  more  in  one  than  in 
the  other.  Take  an  example  of  his  persuasive 
reasoning  from  the  first  inaugural  address, 
where  thirteen  sentences  hold  the  whole  argu- 
ment of  common  sense  against  the  rupturing 
of  the  Union  :  — 

"  One  section  of  our  country,"  he  said, 
"believes  slavery  is  right,  while  the  other 
believes  it  is  wrong,  and  ought  not  to  be  ex- 
tended. This  is  the  only  substantial  dispute. 
The  fugitive  slave  clause  of  the  Constitution, 
and  the  law  for  the  suppression  of  the  foreign 
slave  trade,  are  each  as  well  enforced,  perhaps, 
as  any  law  can  ever  be  in  a  community  where 
the  moral  sense  of  the  people  imperfectly  sup- 
ports the  law  itself.  The  great  body  of  the 
people  abide  by  the  dry  legal  obligation  in 
both  cases,  and  a  few  break  over  in  each. 
This,  I  think,  cannot  be  perfectly  cured ;  and 
it  would  be  worse  in  both  cases  after  the  sep- 
aration than  before.  The  foreign  slave  trade, 
now  imperfectly  suppressed,  would  be  ulti- 
mately  revived,  without   restriction,  in  one 


LINCOLN  255 

section,  while  fugitive  slaves,  now  only  par- 
tially surrendered,  would  not  be  surrendered 
at  all  by  the  other. 

"  Physically  speaking,  we  cannot  separate. 
We  cannot  remove  our  respective  sections 
from  each  other,  nor  build  an  impassable  wall 
between  them.  Husband  and  wife  may  be 
divorced,  and  go  out  of  the  presence  and 
beyond  the  reach  of  each  other;  but  the  dif- 
ferent parts  of  our  country  cannot  do  this. 
They  cannot  but  remain  face  to  face,  and  in- 
tercourse, either  amicable  or  hostile,  must  con- 
tinue between  them.  Is  it  possible,  then,  to 
make  that  intercourse  more  advantageous  or 
more  satisfactory  after  separation  than  before  ? 
Can  aliens  make  treaties  easier  than  friends 
can  make  laws?  Can  treaties  be  more  faith- 
fully enforced  between  aliens  than  laws  can 
among  friends?  Suppose  you  go  to  war,  you 
cannot  fight  always;  and  when,  after  much 
loss  on  both  sides,  and  no  gain  on  either,  you 
cease  fighting,  the  identical  old  questions  as 
to  terms  of  intercourse  are  again  upon  you." 

like  the  power  of  this  appeal  to  reason 
against  the  breaking  of  the  Union  was  the 
power  of  the  President's  thrilling  arraignment, 
a  little  later,  of  the  assailants  of  Fort  Sumter 


256    A  STUDY   OF   GREATNESS   IN   MEN 

for  the  wantonness  of  their  guilt  in  precip- 
itating civil  war.  In  his  message  to  Congress, 
convened  in  special  session  on  the  4th  of  July 
after  the  opening  of  hostilities,  he  recited  the 
circumstances  of  the  event,  and  said  of  it :  — 
^'  It  is  thus  seen  that  the  assault  upon  and 
reduction  of  Fort  Sumter  was  in  no  sense  a 
matter  of  self-defense  on  the  part  of  the  as- 
sailants. They  well  knew  that  the  garrison  in 
the  fort  could  by  no  possibility  commit  ag- 
gression upon  them.  They  knew  —  they  were 
expressly  notified  —  that  the  giving  of  bread 
to  the  few  brave  and  hungry  men  was  all 
which  would  on  that  occasion  be  attempted, 
unless  themselves,  by  resisting  so  much,  should 
provoke  more.  They  knew  that  this  govern- 
ment desired  to  keep  the  garrison  in  the  fort, 
not  to  assail  them,  but  merely  to  maintain 
visible  possession,  and  thus  to  preserve  the 
Union  from  actual  and  immediate  dissolution 
—  trusting,  as  hereinbefore  stated,  to  time, 
discussion  and  the  ballot-box  for  final  adjust- 
ment ;  and  they  assailed  and  reduced  the  fort 
for  precisely  the  reverse  object — to  drive  out 
the  visible  authority  of  the  Federal  Union,  and 
thus  force  it  to  immediate  dissolution.  That 
this  was  their  object  the  executive  well  under- 


LINCOLN  257 

stood ;  and  having  said  to  them  in  the  inau- 
gural address,  ^  You  can  have  no  conflict  with- 
out being  yourselves  the  aggressors/  he  took 
pains  not  only  to  keep  this  declaration  good, 
but  also  to  keep  the  case  so  free  from  the 
power  of  ingenious  sophistry  that  the  world 
should  not  be  able  to  misunderstand  it.  By  the 
affair  at  Fort  Sumter,  with  its  surrounding 
circumstances,  that  point  was  reached.  Then 
and  thereby  the  assailants  of  the  government 
began  the  conflict  of  arms,  without  a  gun  in 
sight  or  in  expectancy  to  return  their  fire,  save 
only  the  few  in  the  fort,  sent  to  that  harbor 
years  before  for  their  own  protection,  and  still 
ready  to  give  that  protection  in  whatever  was 
lawful.  In  this  act,  discarding  all  else,  they 
have  forced  upon  the  country  the  distinct 
issue,  '  immediate  dissolution '  or  blood." 

In  the  same  message  the  sophism  of  the 
secession  doctrine,  "  that  any  State  of  the 
Union  may,  consistently  with  the  National 
Constitution,  and  therefore  lawfully  and  peace- 
fully, withdraw  from  the  Union  without  the 
consent  of  the  Union  or  of  any  other  State," 
is  shattered  in  what  seem  to  be  the  fewest 
words  that  ever  carried  an  argument  of  such 
force  :  — 


258    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

"  This  sophism,"  said  the  President,  "  de- 
rives much,  perhaps  the  whole  of  its  currency 
from  the  assumption  that  there  is  some  om- 
nipotent and  sacred  supremacy  pertaining  to  a 
State  —  to  each  State  of  our  Federal  Union. 
Our  States  have  neither  more  nor  less  power 
than  that  reserved  to  them  in  the  Union  hy 
the  Constitution  —  no  one  of  them  ever  hav- 
ing been  a  State  out  of  the  Union.  The  origi- 
nal ones  passed  into  the  Union  even  before 
they  cast  off  their  British  colonial  depend- 
ence ;  and  the  new  ones  each  came  into  the 
Union  directly  from  a  condition  of  depend- 
ence, excepting  Texas.  And  even  Texas,  in  its 
temporary  independence,  was  never  designated 
a  State.  The  new  ones  only  took  the  designa- 
tion of  States  on  coming  into  the  Union, 
while  that  name  was  first  adopted  for  the  old 
ones  in  and  by  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence. Therein  the  ^  United  Colonies '  were  de- 
clared to  be  ^  free  and  independent  States ' ;  but 
even  then  the  object  plainly  was  not  to  declare 
their  independence  of  one  another  or  of  the 
Union,  but  directly  the  contrary,  as  their  mu- 
tual pledge  and  their  mutual  action,  before, 
at  the  time  and  afterward,  abundantly  show. 
The  express  plighting  of  faith  by  each  and  all 


LINCOLN  259 

of  the  original  thirteen  in  the  Articles  of 
Confederation,  two  years  later,  that  the  Union 
shall  be  perpetual,  is  most  conclusive.  Having 
never  been  States  either  in  substance  or  in 
name  outside  of  the  Union,  whence  this  magi- 
cal omnipotence  of  ^  State  Rights,'  asserting 
a  claim  of  power  to  lawfully  destroy  the  Union 
itself  ?  Much  is  said  about  the  ^  sovereignty ' 
of  the  States  ;  but  the  word  even  is  not  in  the 
National  Constitution,  nor,  as  is  believed,  in 
any  of  the  State  constitutions.  What  is  ^sov- 
ereignty' in  the  political  sense  of  the  term? 
Would  it  be  far  wrong  to  define  it  ^  a  politi- 
cal community  without  a  political  superior '  ? 
Tested  by  this,  no  one  of  our  States  except 
Texas  ever  was  a  sovereignty.  And  even 
Texas  gave  up  the  character  on  coming  into 
the  Union ;  by  which  act  she  acknowledged 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and  the 
laws  and  treaties  of  the  United  States  made 
in  pursuance  of  the  Constitution,  to  be  for 
her  the  supreme  law  of  the  land.  The  States 
have  their  status  in  the  Union,  and  they  have 
no  other  legal  status.  If  they  break  from  this 
they  can  only  do  so  against  law  and  by  revo- 
lution." 

Two  months  later  he  had  entered  the  long 


260      A  STUDY   OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

torment  of  his  trouble  with  a  great  body  of 
shallow  -  minded  good  people,  who  could  not 
His  Labor  see  the  futility,  in  existing  circum- 
aated'Emaa-  stauces,  of  a  stroke  at  slavery,  for  any 
cipation.  desired  purpose,  and  the  fatality  of  it 
to  the  cause  of  the  Union.  General  Fremont, 
their  fit  representative,  had  issued,  as  com- 
manding officer  in  the  Department  of  the 
West,  his  presumptuous  proclamation  of 
emancipation,  thinking  to  force  that  suicidal 
war  policy  on  the  government  and  make  the 
President  a  helpless  follower  of  his  lead. 
Lincoln  nullified  the  insolent  edict  unhesi- 
tatingly, but  in  such  a  manner  as  to  exhibit 
the  fine  generosity  of  his  temper  anew.  Then 
he  faced  the  storm  of  objurgation  that  broke 
on  him,  —  silently  before  the  public  for  a 
twelvemonth,  because  the  actualities  of  the 
situation  in  the  wavering  border  States  could 
not  be  discussed  publicly  without  mischievous 
effects ;  but  what  he  could  say  privately  to  the 
shame  of  his  critics  may  be  seen  in  the  confi- 
dential letter  that  he  wrote  to  Senator  Brown- 
ing, of  his  own  State,  which  appears  in  his 
published  writings. 

Through  all  that  following  year  he  labored 
to  persuade  Congress  to  offer  and  the  Union- 


LINCOLN  261 

ists  of  the  border  States  to  accept  compensa- 
tion for  the  voluntary  freeing  of  their  slaves, 
as  a  means  of  ending  hope  in  the  rebellious 
Confederacy  of  being  joined  by  those  States. 
He  began  the  effort  in  November,  by  drafting 
a  proposed  bill  "for  compensated  abolishment 
in  Delaware."  In  the  following  March  he  ad- 
dressed a  special  message  to  Congress  on  the 
subject,  earnestly  recommending  the  adoption 
of  a  joint  resolution  to  the  following  effect: 
"  That  the  United  States  ought  to  cooperate 
with  any  State  which  may  adopt  gradual  abol- 
ishment of  slavery,  giving  to  such  State  pecu- 
niary aid,  to  be  used  by  such  State,  in  its  dis- 
cretion, to  compensate  for  the  inconveniences, 
public  and  private,  produced  by  such  change 
of  system."  In  support  of  the  proposal  he 
wrote :  — 

"  The  Federal  Government  would  find  its 
hicjhest  interest  in  such  a  measure,  as  one  of 
the  most  efficient  means  of  self-preservation. 
The  leaders  of  the  existing  insurrection  enter- 
tain the  hope  that  this  government  will  ulti- 
mately be  forced  to  acknowledge  the  independ- 
ence of  some  part  of  the  disaffected  region, 
and  that  all  of  the  slave  States  north  of  such 
part  will  then  say,  '  The  Union  for  which  we 


262     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

have  struggled  being  already  gone,  we  now 
choose  to  go  with  the  Southern  section.'  To 
deprive  them  of  this  hope  substantially  ends 
the  rebellion;  and  the  initiation  of  emancipa- 
tion completely  deprives  them  of  it,  as  to  all 
the  States  initiating  it.  The  point  is  not  that 
all  the  States  tolerating  slavery  would  very 
soon,  if  at  all,  initiate  emancipation,  but  that, 
while  the  offer  is  equally  made  to  all,  the  more 
Northern  shall,  by  such  initiation,  make  it  cer- 
tain to  the  more  Southern  that  in  no  event 
will  the  former  ever  join  the  latter  in  their 
proposed  confederacy.  I  say  ^  initiation '  be- 
cause, in  my  judgment,  gradual  and  not  sud- 
den emancipation  is  better  for  all.  In  the  mere 
financial  or  pecuniary  view,  any  member  of 
Congress,  with  the  census  tables  and  treasury 
reports  before  him,  can  readily  see  for  himself 
how  very  soon  the  current  expenditures  of  this 
war  would  purchase,  at  fair  valuation,  all  the 
slaves  in  any  named  State." 

A  few  days  after  sending  this  message  to 
Congress  the  President  invited  the  Representa- 
tives from  Kentucky,  Missouri,  Maryland,  Vir- 
ginia, and  Delaware  to  an  interview  at  the 
White  House,  where  he  went  more  fully  into 
the  reasons  for  his  proposal.  He  found  that 


LINCOLN  263 

they  had  been  made  to  feel  distrustful  of  it 
by  the  New  York  Tribune  and  other  Kepubli- 
can  organs,  which  understood  it  to  mean  that 
they  "  must  accept  gradual  emancipation  ac- 
cording to  the  plan  suggested,  or  get  some- 
thing worse,"  and  they  "  did  not  like  to  be 
coerced  into  emancipation/'  He  strove  ear- 
nestly to  dispel  this  view  of  his  intentions,  and 
received  at  the  end  their  assurance  that,  as 
they  expressed  themselves,  "  whatever  might 
be  our  final  action,  we  all  thought  him  solely 
moved  by  a  high  patriotism  and  sincere  devo- 
tion to  the  happiness  and  glory  of  his  country ; 
and  with  that  conviction  we  should  consider 
respectfully  the  important  suggestion  he  had 
made." 

Congress,  by  large  majorities  in  both 
branches,  adopted  the  proposed  resolution, 
proffering  pecuniary  aid  to  any  State  which 
should  undertake  a  compensated  emancipation 
of  slaves,  and  the  President  lost  no  opportu- 
nity to  press  the  acceptance  of  it  on  the  States 
which  could  be  reached  by  his  appeal.  Having 
occasion,  in  May,  to  revoke  another  presump- 
tuous declaration  of  general  freedom  to  slaves, 
issued  by  Major-Gen eral  David  Hunter,  com- 
manding a  department  embracing  the  three 


264     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

States  of  Florida,  Georgia,  and  South  Carolina, 
he  did  so  by  a  proclamation  in  which  he  went 
beyond  its  immediate  purpose  to  say  this:  — 

"  I  further  make  known  that,  whether  it  be 
competent  for  me,  as  commander-in-chief  of 
the  army  and  navy,  to  declare  the  slaves  of 
any  State  or  States  free,  and  whether,  at  any 
time,  in  any  case,  it  shall  have  become  a  ne- 
cessity indispensable  to  the  maintenance  of 
the  government  to  exercise  such  supposed 
power,  are  questions  which,  under  my  respon- 
sibility, I  reserve  to  myself,  and  which  I  can- 
not feel  justified  in  leaving  to  the  decision 
of  commanders  in  the  field.  These  are  totally 
different  questions  from  those  of  police  regu- 
lations in  armies  and  camps." 

Then,  citing  the  joint  resolution  which  ho 
had  recommended  to  Congress  in  the  preced- 
ing March  and  which  that  body  had  adopted, 
he  added :  — 

"  The  resolution  .  .  .  now  stands  an  authen- 
tic, definite  and  solemn  proposal  of  the  nation 
to  the  States  and  people  most  immediately 
interested  in  the  subject-matter.  To  the  people 
of  those  States  I  now  earnestly  appeal.  I  do 
not  argue — I  beseech  you  to  make  arguments 
for  yourselves.    You  cannot,  if  you  would,  be 


LINCOLN  265 

blind  to  the  signs  of  the  times.  I  beg  of  you 
a  calm  and  enlarged  consideration  of  them, 
ranging,  if  it  may  be,  far  above  personal  and 
partisan  politics.  This  proposal  makes  com- 
mon cause  for  a  common  object,  casting  no 
reproaches  upon  any.  It  acts  not  the  Pharisee. 
The  change  it  contemplates  would  come  gently 
as  the  dews  of  heaven,  not  rending  or  wreck- 
ing anything.  Will  you  not  embrace  it?  So 
much  good  has  not  been  done,  by  one  effort, 
in  all  past  time,  as  in  the  providence  of  God 
it  is  now  your  high  privilege  to  do.  May  the 
vast  future  not  have  to  lament  that  you  have 
neglected  it." 

On  the  12th  of  July  he  sought  another  con- 
ference with  the  border  States  Representatives 
in  Congress  and  renewed  his  appeal  to  them. 

"Let  the  States  which  are  in  rebellion  see 
definitely  and  certainly,"  he  said,  "  that  in  no 
event  will  the  States  you  represent  ever  join 
their  proposed  confederacy,  and  they  cannot 
much  longer  maintain  the  contest.  But  you 
cannot  divest  them  of  their  hope  to  ultimately 
have  you  with  them  so  long  as  you  show  a 
determination  to  perpetuate  the  institution 
within  your  own  States.  Beat  them  at  elec- 
tions, as  you  have  overwhelmingly  done,  and 


266     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

nothing  daunted,  they  still  claim  you  as  their 
own.  You  and  I  know  what  the  lever  of  their 
power  is.  Break  that  lever  before  their  faces, 
and  they  can  shake  you  no  more  forever.  .  .  . 
If  the  war  continues  long,  as  it  must  if  the  ob- 
ject be  not  sooner  attained,  the  institution  in 
your  States  will  be  extinguished  by  mere  fric- 
tion and  abrasion  —  by  the  mere  incidents  of 
the  war.  It  will  be  gone,  and  you  will  have 
nothing  valuable  in  Heu  of  it.  Much  of  its 
value  is  gone  already.  How  much  better  for 
you  and  for  your  people  to  take  the  step  which 
at  once  shortens  the  war  and  secures  substantial 
compensation  for  that  which  is  sure  to  be 
wholly  lost  in  any  other  event !  .  .  . 

"  I  am  pressed  with  a  difficulty  not  yet  men- 
tioned —  one  which  threatens  division  among 
those  who,  united,  are  none  too  strong.  An 
instance  of  it  is  known  to  you.  General  Hun- 
ter is  an  honest  man.  He  was,  and  I  hope 
still  is,  my  friend.  I  valued  him  none  the  less 
for  his  agreeing  with  me  in  the  general  wish 
that  all  men  everywhere  could  be  free.  He 
proclaimed  all  men  free  within  certain  States, 
and  I  repudiated  the  proclamation.  He  ex- 
pected more  good  and  less  harm  from  the 
measure  than  I  could  believe  would  follow. 


LINCOLN  267 

Yet,  in  repudiating  it,  I  gave  dissatisfaction, 
if  not  offense,  to  many  whose  support  the 
country  cannot  afford  to  lose.  And  this  is 
not  the  end  of  it.  The  pressure  in  this  direc- 
tion is  still  upon  me,  and  is  still  increasing. 
By  conceding  what  I  now  ask  you  can  relieve 
me,  and,  much  more,  can  relieve  the  country, 
in  this  important  point.  Upon  these  consider- 
ations I  have  again  begged  your  attention  to 
the  message  of  March  last." 

What  he  so  pleaded  for  was  not  yielded,  and 
the  demand  on  him  for  a  military  edict  of 
freedom  which  his  profound  sagacity  could 
not  yet  approve,  as  being  of  probable  effect 
for  help  to  the  national  cause  as  much  as  for 
harm,  grew  heavier  from  day  to  day.  Its  prin- 
cipal mouthpiece  was  the  New  York  Tribune, 
through  which  Horace  Greeley  harangued  the 
President  angrily,  on  the  19th  of  August,  in 
what  he  assumed  to  entitle  "The  Prayer  of 
Twenty  Millions,"  and  in  which  he  went  so 
far  as  to  declare  that  "on  the  face  of  this 
wide  earth  there  is  not  one  disinterested,  de- 
termined, intelligent  champion  of  the  Union 
cause  who  does  not  feel  that  all  attempts  to 
put  down  the  rebellion  and  at  the  same  time 
uphold  its  inciting  cause  are  preposterous  and 


268     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

futile."  This  insulting  intimation  that  he  was 
not  a  "  disinterested,  determined,  intelligent 
champion  of  the  Union  cause/'  and  that  he 
was  attempting  to  uphold  slavery,  drew  from 
the  patient,  steadfast,  far-seeing  pilot  of  the 
ship  of  state  his  famous  "  Letter  to  Horace 
Greeley,"  which  said:  — 

^^  As  to  the  policy  I  ^  seem  to  be  pursuing,' 
as  you  say,  I  have  not  meant  to  leave  any  one 
in  doubt.  I  would  save  the  Union.  I  would 
save  it  the  shortest  way  under  the  Constitu- 
tion. The  sooner  the  national  authority  can 
be  restored,  the  nearer  the  Union  will  be  to 
^  the  Union  as  it  was.*  If  there  be  those  who 
would  not  save  the  Union  unless  they  could  at 
the  same  time  save  slavery,  I  do  not  agree 
with  them.  If  there  be  those  who  would  not 
save  the  Union  unless  they  could  at  the  same 
time  destroy  slavery,  I  do  not  agree  with 
them.  My  paramount  object  in  this  struggle 
is  to  save  the  Union,  and  is  not  either  to 
save  or  to  destroy  slavery.  If  I  could  save 
the  Union  without  freeing  any  slave,  I  would 
do  it ;  and  if  I  could  save  it  by  freeing  all 
the  slaves,  I  would  do  it;  and  if  I  could  do 
it  by  freeing  some  and  leaving  others  alone, 
I  would  also  do  that.    What  I  do  about  slav- 


LINCOLN  269 

ery  and  the  colored  race,  I  do  because  I  be- 
lieve it  helps  to  save  the  Union ;  and  what  I 
forbear,  I  forbear  because  I  do  not  believe  it 
would  help  to  save  the  Union.  I  shall  do  less 
whenever  I  shall  believe  what  I  am  doing 
hurts  the  cause,  and  I  shall  do  more  whenever 
I  shall  believe  doing  more  will  help  the  cause. 
1  shall  try  to  correct  errors  when  shown  to  be 
errors,  and  I  shall  adopt  new  views  so  fast  as 
they  shall  appear  to  be  true  views.  I  have 
here  stated  my  purpose  according  to  my  view 
of  official  duty;  and  I  intend  no  modification 
of  my  oft-expressed  personal  wish  that  all  men 
everywhere  could  be  free." 

His  profoundly  controlling  sense  of  the  dis- 
tinction that  must  always  be  guarded  in  his 
mind,  between  the  promptings  of  his  personal 
feeling  and  the  dictates  of  his  official  duty, 
which  he  strove  in  this  letter  to  make  under- 
stood, was  expressed  more  distinctly  by  Mr. 
Lincoln  much  later,  in  April,  1864,  when  re- 
marks on  the  subject  which  he  had  made  to 
Governor  Bramlette  of  Kentucky,  and  others, 
were  put  in  writing  by  him  at  their  request. 
He  said  then :  — 

"  I  am  naturally  anti-slavery.  If  slavery  is 
not  wrong,  nothing  is  wrong.  I  cannot  remem- 


270     A   STUDY  OF  GREATNESS   IN  MEN 

ber  when  I  did  not  so  think  and  feel ;  and 
yet  I  have  never  understood  that  the  presi- 
dency conferred  on  me  an  unrestricted  right 
to  act  officially  upon  this  judgment  and  feel- 
ing. It  was  in  the  oath  I  took  that  I  would,  to 
the  best  of  my  ability,  preserve,  protect,  and 
defend  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 
I  could  not  take  the  office  without  taking  the 
oath.  Nor  was  it  my  view  that  I  might  take  an 
oath  to  get  power,  and  break  the  oath  in  using 
the  power.  I  understood,  too,  that  in  ordinary 
civil  administration  this  oath  even  forbade  me 
to  practically  indulge  my  primary  abstract 
judgment  on  the  moral  question  of  slavery. 
I  had  publicly  declared  this  many  times,  and 
in  many  ways.  And  I  aver  that,  to  this  day, 
I  have  done  no  official  act  in  mere  deference 
to  my  abstract  judgment  and  feeling  on  slav- 
ery. I  did  understand,  however,  that  my  oath 
to  preserve  the  Constitution  to  the  best  of  my 
ability  imposed  upon  me  the  duty  of  preserv- 
ing, by  every  indispensable  means,  that  gov- 
ernment—  that  nation,  of  which  that  Consti- 
tution was  the  organic  law.  Was  it  possible 
to  lose  the  nation  and  yet  preserve  the  Con- 
stitution? By  general  law,  life  and  limb  must 
be  protected,  yet  often  a  limb  must  be  ampu- 


LINCOLN  271 

tated  to  save  a  life ;  but  a  life  is  never  wisely 
given  to  save  a  limb.  I  felt  that  measures  other- 
wise unconstitutional  might  become  lawful  by 
becoming  indispensable  to  the  preservation 
of  the  Constitution  through  the  preservation  of 
the  nation.  Right  or  wrong,  I  assumed  this 
ground,  and  now  avow  it.  I  could  not  feel 
that,  to  the  best  of  my  ability,  I  had  even 
tried  to  preserve  the  Constitution,  if,  to  save 
slavery,  or  any  minor  matter,  I  should  permit 
the  wreck  of  government,  country  and  Con- 
stitution, all  together.  When,  early  in  the  war, 
General  Fremont  attempted  military  emanci- 
pation, I  forbade  it,  because  I  did  not  then 
think  it  an  indispensable  necessity.  When,  a 
little  later.  General  Cameron,  then  secretary 
of  war,  suggested  the  arming  of  the  blacks, 
I  objected,  because  I  did  not  yet  think  it  an  in- 
dispensable necessity.  When,  still  later.  Gen- 
eral Hunter  attempted  military  emancipation, 
I  again  forbade  it,  because  I  did  not  yet  think 
the  indispensable  necessity  had  come.  When, 
in  March,  May,  and  July,  1862,  I  made  ear- 
nest and  successive  appeals  to  the  border  States 
to  favor  compensated  emancipation,  I  believed 
the  indispensable  necessity  for  mihtary  eman- 
cipation and  arming  the  blacks  would  come 


272     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

unless  averted  by  that  measure.  They  declined 
the  proposition,  and  I  was,  in  my  best  judg- 
ment, driven  to  the  alternative  of  either  surren- 
dering the  Union,  and  with  it  the  Constitution, 
or  of  laying  a  strong  hand  upon  the  colored 
element.    I  chose  the  latter." 

This  shows  us  how  absolute  in  its  sacred- 
ness  to  him  were  the  obligations  of  the  oath  of 
his  office,  to  preserve,  protect  and  de- 
tarypro-  fend  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
oiEmanci-  States  J  how  absolutely  it  forbade 
pation.  1^-^  ^^  ^^  anything  against  slavery  to 
any  other  end  than  of  helpfulness  to  the  per- 
formance of  that  paramount  duty ;  and  why, 
therefore,  he  pondered  and  debated  so  long 
the  probabilities  of  effect  from  a  proclamation 
of  emancipation,  as  being  favorable  or  unfa- 
vorable to  the  chances  of  success  in  the  preser- 
vation of  the  Constitution  by  the  preservation 
of  the  Union.  He  was  balancing  the  solemn 
question  in  that  faithfully  reasoning  mind  of 
his  when  his  letter  to  Horace  Greeley  was 
written ;  and  he  was  so  near  to  a  determina- 
tion upon  it  that  his  Preliminary  Proclamation 
of  Emancipation  was  issued  exactly  one  month 
later.  Even  nine  days  before  the  publishing  of 
the  proclamation  he  argued  against  the  mea- 


LINCOLN  273 

sure  with  a  committee  from  the  religious 
denominations  of  Chicago,  who  came  to  plead 
with  him  for  it :  "  What  good  would  a  pro- 
clamation of  emancipation  from  me  do,  espe- 
cially as  we  are  now  situated?"  he  asked.  "I 
do  not  want  to  issue  a  document  that  the 
whole  world  will  see  must  necessarily  be  in- 
operative, like  the  Pope's  bull  against  the 
comet.  Would  my  word  free  the  slaves,  when 
I  cannot  even  enforce  the  Constitution  in  the 
rebel  States  ?  Is  there  a  single  court,  or  mag- 
istrate, or  individual  that  would  be  influenced 
by  it  there  ?  And  what  reason  is  there  to  think 
it  would  have  any  greater  effect  upon  the 
slaves  than  the  late  law  of  Congress,  which  I 
approved,  and  which  offers  protection  and 
freedom  to  the  slaves  of  rebel  masters  who 
come  within  our  lines?  Yet  I  cannot  learn 
that  that  law  has  caused  a  single  slave  to  come 
over  to  us.  .  .  .  Now,  then,  tell  me,  if  you 
please,  what  possible  result  of  good  would  fol- 
low the  issuing  of  such  a  proclamation  as  you 
desire?  Understand,  I  raise  no  objections 
against  it  on  legal  or  constitutional  grounds  ; 
for,  as  commander-in-chief  of  the  army  and 
navy,  in  time  of  war  I  suppose  I  have  a  right 
to  take  any  measure  which  may  best  subdue 


274     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

the  enemy;  nor  do  I  urge  objections  of  a 
moral  nature,  in  view  of  possible  consequences 
of  insurrection  and  massacre  at  the  South.  I 
view  this  matter  as  a  practical  war  measure, 
to  be  decided  on  according  to  the  advantages 
or  disadvantages  it  may  offer  to  the  suppression 
of  the  rebellion.  .  .  .  Do  not  misunderstand 
me  because  I  have  mentioned  these  objections. 
They  indicate  the  difficulties  that  have  thus 
far  prevented  my  action  in  some  such  way  as 
you  desire.  I  have  not  decided  against  a  pro- 
clamation of  liberty  to  the  slaves,  but  hold  the 
matter  under  advisement;  and  I  can  assure 
you  that  the  subject  is  on  my  mind,  by  day  and 
night,  more  than  any  other.  Whatever  shall 
appear  to  be  God's  will,  I  will  do." 

Nobody  can  doubt  that  the  subject  was  on 
his  mind  by  day  and  by  night,  with  infinitely 
more  pressure  than  on  the  minds  of  any  who 
wished  to  determine  it  for  him.  Probably,  in 
the  few  days  that  passed  between  his  words 
to  the  Chicago  committee  and  the  publishing 
of  the  Proclamation  of  Emancipation  (prepared 
tentatively  some  weeks  before),  he  had  arrived 
at  no  clearer  certainty  of  judgment  as  to  its 
effect,  but  only  reached  the  conviction  that  he 
must  risk  the  attempt  with  it. 


LINCOLN  275 

Results  proved  that  he  had  reason  for  his 
hesitations  and  doubts.  Twenty  months  later, 
in  his  talk  to  Governor  Bramlette  and  others, 
the  most  that  he  could  claim  for  the  proclama- 
tion as  a  war  measure  was,  that  '^more  than 
a  year  of  trial  now  shows  no  loss  by  it  in  our 
foreign  relations,  none  in  our  home  popular 
sentiment,  none  in  our  white  military  force — 
no  loss  by  it  anyhow  or  anywhere  " ;  and  that 
"on  the  contrary  it  shows  a  gain  of  quite  a 
hundred  and  thirty  thousand  soldiers,  seamen 
and  laborers" — from  the  emancipated  slaves. 
If  there  was  no  loss  of  real  strength  in  "  our 
home  popular  sentiment "  produced  by  the  pro- 
clamation, there  was  certainly  much  embitter- 
ment  of  feeling  and  much  excitement  of  ac- 
tivity in  those  Northern  circles  where  more  or 
less  of  the  tie  of  old  political  alliances  with 
the  South  and  with  slavery  was  still  of  force. 
"  Copperheadism "  reared  its  malignant  head 
and  showed  its  fangs,  as  it  had  not  done  be- 
fore, and  the  party  of  the  War  Democrats  be- 
came a  more  troublesome  and  embarrassing 
party  of  opposition  than  it  had  been  hitherto. 
In  the  border  slave  States  there  was  plainly  a 
cooling  of  the  loyal  temper,  though  not  to  the 
point  of  any  threatening  reaction.  The  adverse 


276    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

effects,  in  fact,  were  only  serious  enough  to 
indicate  how  dangerous  they  would  have  been 
at  an  earlier  stage  of  the  war,  before  the  na- 
tion had  been  resolutely  settled  to  its  painful 
task. 

As  for  the  easing  or  shortening  of  that  task, 
by  the  great  decree  of  death  to  slavery,  there 
is  no  sign  of  that  effect.  None  was  visible  in 
the  two  years  and  a  half  of  war  which  followed 
it,  and  none  is  discernible  to-day.  The  battle 
was  fought  out  to  its  bitter  end,  of  exhaustion 
to  the  weaker  side.  Possibly  it  had  to  be  car- 
ried to  that  decisive  ending ;  but  if  a  more 
merciful  conclusion  was  in  any  way  possible 
it  would  surely  have  been  reached  by  the  way 
which  Lincoln  strove  so  hard  to  have  taken. 
Voluntary  acceptance  of  compensated  emanci- 
pation by  the  border  States  would  have  dis- 
heartened the  Confederates  as  nothing  else 
could,  by  destroying  all  hope  of  the  adhesion 
of  those  States  to  their  Confederacy.  What 
perfect  conditions  would  thus  have  been  pre- 
pared for  a  warning  proclamation,  like  that  of 
September  22, 1862,  holding  the  same  proffer 
of  compensated  emancipation  open  for  a  des- 
ignated period  to  the  States  in  rebellion,  at 
the  end  of  which  time  the  whole  power  of 


LINCOLN  211 

government  would  be  directed  to  the  compul- 
sory liberation  of  all  slaves !  Can  we  doubt  that 
this — so  prepared  for,  as  Lincoln  wished  to 
have  it —  would  have  raised  demands  in  the 
Confederacy  for  acceptance  of  the  proffer,  and 
caused  dissensions  enough  to  weaken  the  re- 
bellion greatly,  if  not  to  break  it  down  ? 

Delayed  as  it  was  by  Lincoln's  wisdom,  un- 
til the  irresistible  trend  of  events  had  brought 
a  safe  majority  of  the  upholders  of  the  Union 
as  near  to  agreement  in  approval  of  it  as  they 
could  be  brought,  the  Proclamation  of  Eman- 
cipation was  an  immortally  great  and  necessary 
measure;  not  as  being  importantly  contribu- 
tory to  the  defeat  of  secession,  but  as  giving 
finality  to  the  defeat.  It  certified  to  the  country 
and  the  world  tliat  slavery  should  not  survive 
the  rebellion  it  had  caused,  and  that  the  Union 
of  States  to  be  contended  for  thenceforth 
should  be  a  Union  in  which  all  men  were 
free.  It  lifted  the  Union  side  of  the  Civil  War 
to  a  moral  plane,  above  the  purely  legal  ground 
on  which  it  had  to  be  begun,  and  it  was 
Lincoln's  wise  management  that  brought  the 
le2:al  and  the  moral  motive  into  consistent  bar- 
mony,  for  the  energizing  of  both. 

And  now,  having  satisfied  the  anti-slavery 


278    A   STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN   MEN 

demand,  the  President  must  turn  to  reason 
with  those  who  were  angered  by  the  procla- 
mation, denouncing  it  as  an  abolition 
soningwith  mcasurc,  false  to  the  purpose  and  fatal 

theDisaJ-  '  *»      i        Vrr         p  i 

looted atthe  to  the  success  01  the  War  tor  the 
Union.  The  number  taking  that  atti- 
tude was  seriously  large.  He  had  also  to  deal 
with  the  malignant  faction  at  the  North  whose 
opposition  to  the  government  ran  now  into 
seditious  and  treasonable  courses ;  and,  finally, 
he  had  to  reason  with  a  formidable  body  of 
political  opponents  who,  while  taking  no  part 
in  such  disloyal  conspiracies,  yet  denounced 
every  measure  of  the  executive  against  them 
by  any  other  than  the  slow  ordinary  processes 
of  the  civil  law.  How  scorchingly,  with  a  few 
quiet  words,  he  could  expose  the  unreasonable- 
ness of  such  denunciations  we  may  see  in  a  few 
passages  from  his  letter  to  Erastus  Corning 
and  others,  written  on  the  12th  of  June,  1863. 
Resolutions  adopted  at  a  public  meeting  in 
Albany  had  been  sent  to  him  by  the  officers  of 
the  meeting,  and  this  letter  was  his  reply.  In 
part  he  wrote :  — 

"  The  resolutions  promise  to  support  me  in 
every  constitutional  and  lawful  measure  to  sup- 
press the  rebellion ;  and  I  have  not  knowingly 


LINCOLN  279 

employed,  nor  shall  knowingly  employ,  any 
other.  But  the  meeting,  by  their  resolutions, 
assert  and  argue  that  certain  military  arrests, 
and  proceedings  following  them,  for  which  I 
am  ultimately  responsible,  are  unconstitu- 
tional. I  think  they  are  not.  The  resolutions 
quote  from  the  Constitution  the  definition  of 
treason,  and  also  the  limiting  safeguards  and 
guarantees  therein  provided  for  the  citizen  on 
trials  for  treason,  and  on  his  being  held  for 
capital  or  otherwise  infamous  crimes,  and  in 
criminal  prosecutions  his  right  to  a  speedy 
and  public  trial  by  an  impartial  jury.  They 
proceed  to  resolve  ^that  these  safeguards  of 
the  rights  of  the  citizen  against  the  preten- 
sions of  arbitrary  power  were  intended  more 
especially  for  his  protection  in  times  of  civil 
commotion/  And,  apparently  to  demonstrate 
the  proposition,  the  resolutions  proceed :  ^  They 
were  secured  substantially  to  the  English  peo- 
ple after  years  of  protracted  civil  war,  and  were 
adopted  into  our  Constitution  at  the  close  of 
the  Revolution.'  Would  not  the  demonstration 
have  been  better  if  it  could  have  been  truly  said 
that  these  safeguards  had  been  adopted  and 
applied  during  the  civil  wars  and  during  our 
revolution,  instead  of  after  the  one  and  at  the 


280    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  EST  MEN 

close  of  the  other?  I,  too,  am  devotedly  for 
them  after  civil  war,  and  before  civil  war,  and 
at  all  times  ^  except  when,  in  cases  of  rebellion 
or  invasion,  the  public  safety  may  require' 
their  suspension.  .  .  . 

"  I  was  slow  to  adopt  the  strong  measures 
which  by  degrees  I  have  been  forced  to  regard 
as  being  within  the  exceptions  of  the  Consti- 
tution, and  as  indispensable  to  the  pubHc 
safety.  Nothing  is  better  known  to  history 
than  that  courts  of  justice  are  utterly  incom- 
petent to  such  cases  [of  treasonable  secret 
aid  to  a  rebellion] .  Civil  courts  are  organized 
chiefly  for  trials  of  individuals,  or,  at  most,  a 
few  individuals  acting  in  concert  —  and  this 
in  quiet  times,  and  on  charges  well  defined  in 
the  law.  .  .  .  He  who  dissuades  one  man  from 
volunteering,  or  induces  one  soldier  to  desert, 
weakens  the  Union  cause  as  much  as  he  who 
kills  a  Union  soldier  in  battle.  Yet  this  dis- 
suasion or  inducement  may  be  so  conducted 
as  to  be  no  defined  crime  of  which  any  civil 
court  would  take  cognizance.  Ours  is  a  case 
of  rebellion  —  so  called  by  the  resolutions 
before  me  —  in  fact,  a  clear,  flagrant  and 
gigantic  case  of  rebellion  ;  and  the  provision 
of  the  Constitution  that  '  the  privilege  of  the 


LINCOLN  281 

writ  of  habeas  corpus  shall  not  be  suspended 
unless  when,  in  cases  of  rebellion  or  invasion, 
the  public  safety  may  require  it,'  is  the  pro- 
vision which  specially  applies  to  our  present 
case.  This  provision  plainly  attests  the  under- 
standing of  those  who  made  the  Constitution, 
that  ordinary  courts  of  justice  are  inadequate 
to  '  cases  of  rebellion,'  —  attests  their  pur- 
pose that,  in  such  cases,  men  may  be  held  in 
custody  whom  the  courts,  acting  on  ordinary 
rules,  would  discharge.  .  .  . 

"  Of  how  little  value  the  constitutional  pro- 
vision I  have  quoted  will  be  rendered  if  arrests 
shall  never  be  made  until  defined  crimes  shall 
have  been  committed,  may  be  illustrated  by  a 
few  notable  examples  :  John  C.  Breckenridge, 
General  Robert  E.  Lee,  General  Joseph  E. 
Johnston,  General  John  B.  Magruder,  General 
William  B.  Preston,  General  Simon  B.  Buck- 
ner,  and  Commodore  Franklin  Buchanan,  now 
occupying  the  very  highest  places  in  the  rebel 
service,  were  all  within  the  power  of  the  gov- 
ernment since  the  rebellion  began,  and  were 
nearly  as  well  known  to  be  traitors  then  as 
now.  Unquestionably  if  we  had  seized  and 
held  them,  the  insurgent  cause  would  be  much 
weaker.   But  no  one  of  them  had  then  com- 


282    A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

mitted  any  crime  defined  in  the  law.  Every 
one  of  them,  if  arrested,  would  have  been  dis- 
charged on  habeas  corpus  were  the  writ  al- 
lowed to  operate.  In  view  of  these  and  similar 
cases,  I  think  the  time  not  unlikely  to  come 
when  I  shall  be  blamed  for  having  made  too 
few  arrests  rather  than  too  many.  .  .  . 

"  I  understand  the  meeting  whose  resolu- 
tions I  am  considering  to  be  in  favor  of  sup- 
pressing the  rebellion  by  military  force  —  by 
armies.  Long  experience  has  shown  that  ar- 
mies cannot  be  maintained  unless  desertion 
shall  be  punished  by  the  severe  penalty  of  death. 
The  case  requires,  and  the  law  and  the  Con- 
stitution sanction,  this  punishment.  Must  I 
shoot  a  simple-minded  soldier  boy  who  deserts, 
while  I  must  not  touch  a  hair  of  a  wily  agita- 
tor who  induces  him  to  desert  ?  This  is  none 
the  less  injurious  when  effected  by  getting 
a  father  or  brother  or  friend  into  a  public 
meeting,  and  there  working  upon  his  feel- 
ings till  he  is  persuaded  to  write  the  soldier 
boy  that  he  is  fighting  in  a  bad  cause,  for 
a  wicked  administration  of  a  contemptible 
government,  too  weak  to  arrest  and  punish 
him  if  he  shall  desert.  I  think  that,  in  such 
a  case,  to  silence  the  agitator  and  save  the 


LINCOLN  283 

boy  is  not  only  constitutional,  but  withal  a 
great  mercy." 

The  exercise  of  martial  law  which,  at  this 
time,  had  specially  excited  the  political  oppo- 
nents of  the  government,  was  that  which  dealt 
with  Vallandigham,  the  most  virulent  and  in- 
fluential representative  of  Copperheadism  in 
the  North.  He  had  been  arrested  in  Ohio,  on 
the  4th  of  May,  for  disloyal  speeches,  had 
been  tried  by  a  miHtary  commission,  and,  after 
a  brief  imprisonment,  had  been  sent  through 
the  lines  into  rebeldom,  to  join  his  allies  there. 
Whereupon  a  timely  meeting  of  the  Demo- 
cratic State  Convention  in  Ohio  nominated 
him  for  Governor  of  Ohio,  and  adopted  reso- 
lutions demanding  freedom  for  him  to  return 
to  his  home.  These  resolutions  were  presented 
to  the  President,  by  a  committee  from  the  con- 
vention, soon  after  the  publication  of  his  letter 
to  the  Albany  meeting,  and  the  chairman  of 
the  committee,  in  some  remarks,  attempted  a 
criticism  of  what  was  said  in  that  letter.  The 
President  replied  in  writing,  on  the  29th  of 
June,  and  disposed  of  the  essential  part  of 
the  criticism  in  these  few  incisive  words :  — 

"  You  ask,  in  substance,  whether  I  really 
claim  that  I  may  override  all  the  guaranteed 


284     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

rights  of  individuals,  on  the  plea  of  conserv- 
ing the  public  safety — when  I  may  choose 
to  say  the  public  safety  requires  it.  This 
question,  divested  of  the  phraseology  calcu- 
lated to  represent  me  as  struggling  for  an  ar- 
bitrary personal  prerogative,  is  either  simply 
a  question  who  shall  decide,  or  an  affirmation 
that  nobody  shall  decide,  what  the  public 
safety  does  require  in  cases  of  rebellion  or 
invasion.  The  Constitution  contemplates  the 
question  as  likely  to  occur  for  decision,  but 
it  does  not  expressly  declare  who  is  to  decide 
it.  By  necessary  implication,  when  rebellion  or 
invasion  comes,  the  decision  is  to  be  made 
from  time  to  time;  and  I  think  the  man 
whom,  for  the  time,  the  people  have,  under 
the  Constitution,  made  the  commander-in- 
chief  of  their  army  and  navy,  is  the  man  who 
holds  the  power  and  bears  the  responsibility 
of  making  it.  If  he  uses  the  power  justly,  the 
same  people  will  probably  justify  him ;  if  he 
abuses  it,  he  is  in  their  hands  to  be  dealt  with 
by  all  the  modes  they  have  reserved  to  them- 
selves in  the  Constitution." 

When  he  turned  to  the  demands  of  the 
Ohio  convention,  for  Mr.  Vallandigham's  lib- 
eration, he  met  it  with  a  reply  so  perfect,  so 


LINCOLN  285 

pat,  so  pointed,  and  so  straight  to  the  point, 
—  so  humorous  in  its  very  logicality,  that  it' 
shook  the  whole  country  with  a  laugh  of  ad- 
miration and  delight :  — 

"  The  convention  you  represent,"  he  wrote, 
"  have  nominated  Mr.  Vallandigham  for  Gov- 
ernor of  Ohio,  and  both  they  and  you  have  de- 
clared the  purpose  to  sustain  the  National  Union 
by  all  constitutional  means.  But  of  course  they 
and  you  in  common  reserve  to  yourselves  to 
decide  what  are  constitutional  means ;  and,  un- 
Hke  the  Albany  meeting,  you  omit  to  state  or 
intimate  that  in  your  opinion  an  army  is  a  con- 
stitutional means  of  saving  the  Union  against 
a  rebellion,  or  even  to  intimate  that  you  are  con- 
scious of  an  existing  rebellion  being  in  progress 
with  the  avowed  object  of  destroying  that  very 
Union.  At  the  same  time  your  nominee  for 
Governor,  in  whose  behalf  you  appeal,  is  known 
to  you  and  to  the  world  to  declare  against  the 
use  of  an  army  to  suppress  the  rebelKon.  Your 
own  attitude,  therefore,  encourages  desertion, 
resistance  to  the  draft,  and  the  like,  because 
it  teaches  those  who  incline  to  desert  and  to 
escape  the  draft  to  believe  it  is  your  purpose 
to  protect  them,  and  to  hope  that  you  will 
become  strong  enough  to  do  so. 


286     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

"After  a  short  personal  intercourse  with 
you,  gentlemen  of  the  committee,  I  cannot 
say  I  think  you  desire  this  effect  to  follow 
your  attitude;  but  I  assure  you  that  both 
friends  and  enemies  of  the  Union  look  upon 
it  in  this  light.  It  is  a  substantial  hope,  and 
by  consequence  a  real  strength,  to  the  enemy. 
If  it  is  a  false  hope  and  one  which  you  would 
willingly  dispel,  I  will  make  the  way  exceed- 
ingly easy.  I  send  you  duplicates  of  this  let- 
ter in  order  that  you,  or  a  majority  of  you, 
may,  if  you  choose,  indorse  your  names  upon 
one  of  them  and  return  it  thus  indorsed  to 
me,  with  the  understanding  that  those  sign- 
ing are  thereby  committed  to  the  following 
propositions,  and  to  nothing  else  :  — 

"  1.  That  there  is  now  a  rebellion  in  the 
United  States,  the  object  and  tendency  of  which 
is  to  destroy  the  National  Union ;  and  that,  in 
your  opinion,  an  army  and  navy  are  constitu- 
tional means  for  suppressing  that  rebellion ; 

"2.  That  no  one  of  you  will  do  anything 
which,  in  his  own  judgment,  will  tend  to 
hinder  the  increase,  or  favor  the  decrease,  or 
lessen  the  efficiency  of  the  army  or  navy 
while  engaged  in  the  effort  to  suppress  that 
rebellion;  and 


LINCOLN  287 

"3.  That  each  of  you  will,  in  his  sphere, 
do  all  he  can  to  have  the  officers,  soldiers  and 
seamen  of  the  army  and  navy,  while  engaged 
in  the  effort  to  suppress  the  rebellion,  paid, 
fed,  clad,  and  otherwise  well  provided  for  and 
supported. 

"  And  with  the  further  understanding  that 
upon  receiving  the  letter  and  names  thus  in- 
dorsed, I  will  cause  them  to  be  published, 
which  publication  shall  be,  within  itself,  a  re- 
vocation of  the  order  in  relation  to  Mr.  Val- 
landigham." 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  indorsement 
of  these  propositions  never  came  to  the  Presi- 
dent. At  the  ensuing  election  Vallandigham 
was  buried  under  an  avalanche  of  loyal  votes. 

Such  incomparable  expositions  as  these  of 
the  ruling  mind  in  the  government,  —  of  its 
shrewd,  all-seeing  sagacity,  its  lucidity,  its  rec- 
titude, its  strength,  its  poise,  its  perfect  tem- 
per,— these  were  the  nation's  tonic  in  that 
awfully  trying  time.  Through  and  against 
all  adversities  they  established  in  it  the  will 
and  the  faith  which  supported  it  to  the  end. 
More  than  its  people  knew,  the  uncompromis- 
ing determination  which  never  parleyed  with 
rebellion,  and  accepted  nothing  less  from  the 


288     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

long  conflict  than  an  enduring  vindication 
and  affirmation  of  the  Federal  Constitution  of 
their  republic,  was  drawn  from  the  depths  of 
their  trust  in  a  leader  whom  they  found  them- 
selves learning  to  look  upon  as  a  gift  from 
the  providence  of  God.  That  trust  was  too 
profound,  in  the  minds  and  the  hearts  of 
too  weighty  a  mass  of  the  loyal  people,  to 
be  shaken  by  the  intriguing  factions  which 
strove  to  put  another  in  Lincoln's  place.  His 
reelection  in  1864  by  a  majority  of  more  than 
half  a  million  in  the  popular  vote  was  the  an- 
swer of  the  people  to  an  opposing  party  which 
demanded  peace  by  concession  and  compro- 
mise, "  after  four  years  of  failure,"  as  they  de- 
clared in  convention  at  Chicago,  "  to  restore 
the  Union  by  the  experiment  of  war." 

When,  on  the  next  4:th  of  March,  he 
stood  again  at  the  front  of  the  Capitol,  to  re- 
„^  „     ^    new  his  solemn  oath  of  fidelity  to  the 

The  Second  ^        ^  •/   . 

Inaugural  Constitution,  the  awful  conflict  of 
four  years  was  drawing  near  to  its  end, 
and  an  illimited  triumph  of  the  cause  which  he 
represented  had  come  almost  visibly  within 
reach.  It  was  then,  on  the  approach  to  that 
triumph,  filled  with  a  solemn  sense  of  its  cost 
and  of  the  new  tasks  of  statesmanship  it  must 


LINCOLN         *  289 

bring, — it  was  then  that  the  surpassing  no- 
bility of  spirit  in  the  man  was  most  impres- 
sively shown.  Of  his  wonderful  address  on 
that  day  it  was  said  by  Carl  Schurz:  "No 
American  president  had  ever  spoken  words 
like  these  to  the  American  people.  America 
never  had  a  president  who  found  such  words 
in  his  heart."  And  when,  indeed,  had  the 
chief  of  any  nation  ever  found  in  his  heart 
such  words  before.  These  seventeen  marvel- 
ous sentences,  into  which  the  meanings  of 
the  war  and  of  the  issues  from  it,  as  he  saw 
them,  were  told  to  his  fellow  countrymen,  can 
never  be  put  too  often  into  print  or  too  often 
read :  — 

"And  the  war  came.  One  eighth  of  the 
whole  population  were  colored  slaves,  not  dis- 
tributed generally  over  the  Union,  but  local- 
ized in  the  Southern  part  of  it.  These  slaves 
constituted  a  peculiar  and  powerful  interest. 
All  knew  that  this  interest  was,  somehow,  the 
cause  of  the  war.  To  strengthen,  perpetuate 
and  extend  this  interest  was  the  object  for 
which  the  insurgents  would  rend  the  Union, 
even  by  war;  while  the  government  claimed 
no  right  to  do  more  than  to  restrict  the  ter- 
ritorial enlargement  of  it.    Neither  party  ex- 


290     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

pected  for  the  war  the  magnitude  or  the  du- 
ration which  it  has  already  attained.  Neither 
anticipated  that  the  cause  of  the  conflict  might 
cease  with,  or  even  before,  the  conflict  itself 
should  cease.  Each  looked  for  an  easier  tri- 
umph, and  a  result  less  fundamental  and  as- 
tounding. Both  read  the  same  Bible,  and  pray- 
to  the  same  God  5  and  each  invokes  His  aid 
against  the  other.  It  may  seem  strange  that 
any  men  should  dare  to  ask  a  just  God's  assist- 
ance in  wringing  their  bread  from  the  sweat 
of  other  men's  faces ;  but  let  us  judge  not, 
that  we  be  not  judged.  The  prayers  of  both 
could  not  be  answered — that  of  neither  has 
been  answered  fully.  The  Almighty  has  His 
own  purposes.  ^  Woe  unto  the  world  because 
of  offenses  !  for  it  must  needs  be  that  offenses 
come ;  but  woe  to  that  man  by  whom  the  of- 
fense Cometh.'  If  we  shall  suppose  that  Amer- 
ican slavery  is  one  of  those  offenses  which,  in 
the  providence  of  God,  must  needs  come,  but 
which,  having  continued  through  His  ap- 
pointed time,  He  now  wills  to  remove,  and 
that  He  gives  to  both  North  and  South  this 
terrible  war,  as  the  woe  due  to  those  by  whom 
the  offense  came,  shall  we  discern  therein  any 
departure  from  those  divine  attributes  which 


LINCOLN  291 

the  believers  in  a  living  God  always  ascribe  to 
Him  ?  Fondly  do  we  hope,  —  fervently  do  we 
pray,  — that  this  mighty  scourge  of  war  may 
speedily  pass  away.  Yet,  if  God  wills  that  it 
continue  until  all  the  wealth  piled  by  the 
bondman's  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  un- 
requited toil  shall  be  sunk,  and  until  every 
drop  of  blood  drawn  with  the  lash  shall  be 
paid  by  another  drawn  with  the  sword,  as  was 
said  three  thousand  years  ago,  so  still  it  must 
be  said,  'the  judgments  of  the  Lord  are  true 
and  righteous  altogether.'  With  malice  toward 
none;  with  charity  for  all;  with  firmness  in 
the  right,  as  God  gives  us  to  see  the  right,  let 
us  strive  on  to  finish  the  work  we  are  in ;  to 
bind  up  the  nation's  wounds;  to  care  for  him 
who  shall  have  borne  the  battle,  and  for  his 
widow  and  his  orphan  —  to  do  all  which  may 
achieve  and  cherish  a  just  and  lasting  peace 
among  ourselves,  and  with  all  nations." 

Since  more  than  a  year  before  these  words 
were  spoken  the  two  States  of  Louisiana  and 
Arkansas  had  been  so  fully  controlled  The  wise 
by  the  Union  forces  that  the  problem  I'Z^TrI 
of  a  readjustment  of  their  constitu-  coMtrucuon. 
tional  relations  to  the  Federal  Union  had  be- 
come an  immediately  pressing  one,  and  had 


292     A  STUDY   OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

been  worked  upon  most  profoundly  and  dis- 
passionately, we  may  be  sure,  in  the  Presi- 
dent's mind.  With  his  annual  message  to 
Congress  in  December,  1863,  he  had  issued  a 
proclamation  of  amnesty,  which  opened  doors 
for  the  return  of  both  individuals  and  States 
to  the  Union  fold.  It  excepted  certain  classes 
of  leaders  and  special  offenders  from  an  offer 
of  pardon,  "  with  restoration  of  all  rights  of 
property  except  as  to  slaves,"  extended  to  all 
participants  in  the  rebellion  who  would  sub- 
scribe a  given  oath.  This  oath  pledged  fidelity 
to  the  Constitution  and  the  Union,  and  sup- 
port to  what  had  been  done  by  legislation  and 
proclamation  touching  slavery,  "so  long  and 
so  far  as  not  repealed,  modified  or  held  void  " 
by  Congress  or  the  Supreme  Court.  The  pro- 
clamation announced  that  whenever,  in  any 
State  where  rebellion  had  prevailed,  a  number 
of  qualified  voters,  not  less  than  one  tenth  of 
the  number  of  votes  cast  at  the  presidential 
election  in  1860,  should  take  the  prescribed 
oath  and  reestablish  a  republican  State  gov- 
ernment in  conformity  with  it,  such  govern- 
ment would  be  recognized  as  the  true  govern- 
ment of  the  State ;  but  admission  to  Congress 
of  representatives  and  senators  from  such  State 


LINCOLN  293 

would  be  dependent  on  tlie  Congress  itself. 
This,  said  the  President,  "is  intended  to  pre- 
sent ...  a  mode  in  and  by  which  the  na- 
tional authority  and  loyal  State  governments 
may  be  reestablished"  in  the  States  desig- 
nated; but  "it  must  not  be  understood  that 
no  other  possible  mode  would  be  acceptable." 
The  proclamation  and  its  suggested  plan  of 
"  reconstruction  "  for  the  States  in  rebellion 
gave  general  satisfaction  in  and  out  of  Con- 
gress ;  a  few  radicals  only,  whose  patriotism 
was  more  passionate  than  statesmanlike,  ob- 
jecting to  its  leniency,  and  claiming  for  Con- 
gress the  sole  power  to  deal  with  the  seceded 
States.  According  to  the  radical  view,  the  re- 
bellion of  those  States  had  wrought  a  forfeit- 
ure of  all  their  constitutional  rights  as  States, 
reducing  them  to  the  status  of  subjugated 
provinces,  or  Territories,  from  which  they 
ought  not  to  be  redeemed  on  terms  so  simple 
and  mild  as  the  President  proposed.  This  rad- 
ical view  gained  ground  in  Congress,  and  pro- 
duced finally  a  bill,  passed  in  the  last  hours 
of  the  session  (July,  1864),  which  embodied 
a  very  different  plan,  requiring  a  majority  of 
the  white  male  citizens  of  a  seceded  State  to 
take  the  prescribed  oath  before  any  reconstruc- 


294     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

tion  of  State  government  could  occur,  and  dic- 
tating a  single  mode  in  which  the  proceed- 
ings of  reconstruction  must  be  carried  out. 
This  would  nullify  action  that  had  been  taken 
already  in  Louisiana  and  Arkansas,  and  the 
President  declined  to  sign  the  bill,  which 
came  to  him  an  hour  before  Congress  ad- 
journed. He  laid  it  before  the  country,  in  a 
published  proclamation,  which  said  :  "  While 
I  am  .  .  .  unprepared,  by  a  formal  approval 
of  this  bill,  to  be  inflexibly  committed  to  any 
single  plan  of  restoration,  and  while  I  am  also 
unprepared  to  declare  that  the  free  State  con- 
stitutions already  adopted  and  installed  in 
Arkansas  and  Louisiana  shall  be  set  aside  and 
held  for  naught,  thereby  repelling  and  discour- 
aging the  loyal  citizens  who  have  set  up  the 
same  as  to  further  effort,  .  .  .  nevertheless  I 
am  fully  satisfied  with  the  system  for  restora- 
tion contained  in  the  bill,  as  one  very  proper 
plan  for  the  loyal  people  of  any  State  choosing 
to  adopt  it."  By  this  wise  course  President 
Lincoln  avoided  a  mischievous  issue  between 
Congress  and  himself.  His  own  policy  and 
action,  looking  to  the  speediest  possible  heal- 
ing of  the  wounds  of  civil  war,  were  approved 
by  public  opinion,  and  when  his  radical  op- 


LINCOLN  295 

ponents,  at  the  next  session  of  Congress,  at- 
tempted new  legislation,  to  undo  his  measures, 
they  could  carry  it  through  neither  House. 

The  last  public  utterance  of  the  President, 
three  evenings  before  his  assassination,  when 
he  responded  to  a  serenade  which  celebrated 
the  approaching  end  of  the  rebellion,  had  re- 
ference to  this  difference  between  his  own 
conception  of  what  would  be  wisdom  in  the 
use  of  recovered  authority  over  the  States 
lately  at  war  with  the  national  government 
and  the  more  punitive  course  urged  in  oppo- 
sition to  it.  Speaking  of  the  plan  proclaimed 
in  December,  1863,  he  said :  — 

"I  received  many  commendations  of  the 
plan,  written  and  verbal,  and  not  a  single  ob- 
jection to  it  from  any  professed  emancipa- 
tionist came  to  my  knowledge  until  after  the 
news  reached  Washington  that  the  people  of 
Louisiana  had  begun  to  move  in  accordance 
with  it.  From  about  July,  1862,  I  had  cor- 
responded with  different  persons  supposed  to 
be  interested  [in]  seeking  a  reconstruction  of 
a  State  government  for  Louisiana.  When  the 
message  of  1863,  with  the  plan  before  men- 
tioned, reached  New  Orleans,  General  Banks 
wrote  me  that  he  was  confident  that  the  people, 


296     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

with  his  military  cooperation,  would  recon- 
struct substantially  on  that  plan.  I  wrote  to 
him  and  some  of  them  to  try  it.  They  tried  it, 
and  the  result  is  known.  Such  has  been  my 
only  agency  in  getting  up  the  Louisiana  gov- 
ernment. 

"As  to  sustaining  it,  my  promise  is  out,  as 
before  stated.  But  as  bad  promises  are  better 
broken  than  kept,  I  shall  treat  this  as  a  bad 
promise  and  break  it  whenever  I  shall  be  con- 
vinced that  keeping  it  is  adverse  to  the  public 
interest ;  but  I  have  not  yet  been  so  convinced. 
I  have  been  shown  a  letter  on  the  subject, 
supposed  to  be  an  able  one,  in  which  the 
writer  expresses  regret  that  my  mind  has  not 
seemed  to  be  definitely  fixed  on  the  question 
whether  the  seceded  States,  so  called,  are  in 
the  Union  or  out  of  it.  It  would  perhaps  add 
astonishment  to  his  regret  to  learn  that,  since 
I  have  found  professed  Union  men  endeavor- 
ing to  make  that  a  question,  I  have  purposely 
forborne  any  public  expression  upon  it.  As 
appears  to  me,  that  question  has  not  been,  nor 
yet  is,  a  practically  material  one,  and  that  any 
discussion  of  it,  while  it  thus  remains  practi- 
cally immaterial,  could  have  no  effect  other 
than   the  mischievous  one  of  dividing   our 


LINCOLN  297 

friends.  As  yet,  whatever  it  may  hereafter  be- 
come, that  question  is  bad  as  the  basis  of  a 
controversy,  and  good  for  nothing  at  all — a 
merely  pernicious  abstraction. 

"  We  all  agree  that  the  seceded  States,  so 
called,  are  out  of  their  proper  practical  rela- 
tion -with  the  Union,  and  that  the  sole  object 
of  the  government,  civil  and  military,  in  re- 
gard to  those  States,  is  to  again  get  them  into 
that  proper  practical  relation.  I  believe  that 
it  is  not  only  possible,  but  in  fact  easier,  to 
do  this  without  deciding  or  even  considering 
whether  these  States  have  ever  been  out  of 
the  Union,  than  with  it.  Finding  themselves 
safely  at  home,  it  would  be  utterly  immaterial 
whether  they  had  ever  been  abroad.  Let  us 
all  join  in  doing  the  acts  necessary  to  restor- 
ing the  proper  practical  relations  between  these 
States  and  the  Union,  and  each  forever  inno- 
cently indulge  his  own  opinion,  whether  in 
doing  the  acts  he  brought  the  States  from 
without  into  the  Union,  or  only  gave  them 
proper  assistance,  they  never  having  been  out 
of  it. 

"The  amount  of  constituency,  so  to  speak, 
on  which  the  new  Louisiana  government  rests, 
would  be  more  satisfactory  to  all  if  it  con* 


298     A   STUDY   OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

tained  50,000,  or  30,000,  or  even  20,000,  in- 
stead of  about  12,000,  as  it  does.  It  is  also 
unsatisfactory  to  some  that  the  elective  fran- 
chise is  not  given  to  the  colored  man.  I  would 
myself  prefer  that  it  were  now  conferred  on 
the  very  intelligent,  and  on  those  who  serve 
our  cause  as  soldiers.  Still  the  question  is  not 
whether  the  Louisiana  government  as  it  stands 
is  quite  all  that  is  desirable.  The  question  is, 
will  it  be  wiser  to  take  it  as  it  is  and  help  to 
improve  it,  or  to  reject  and  disperse  it  ?  Can 
Louisiana  be  brought  into  proper  practical  rela- 
tions to  the  Union  sooner  by  sustaining  or  by 
discarding  her  new  State  government?  .  .  . 
"What  has  been  said  of  Louisiana  will 
apply  generally  to  other  States.  And  yet  so 
great  peculiarities  pertain  to  each  State,  and 
such  important  and  sudden  changes  occur  in 
the  same  State,  and,  withal,  so  new  and  un- 
precedented is  the  whole  case,  that  no  exclu- 
sive and  inflexible  plan  can  safely  be  prescribed 
as  to  details  and  collaterals.  Such  exclusive 
and  inflexible  plan  would  surely  become  a  new 
entanglement.  Important  principles  may  and 
must  be  inflexible.  In  the  present  situation,  as 
the  phrase  goes,  it  may  be  my  duty  to  make 
some  new  announcement  to  the  people  of  the 


LINCOLN  299 

South.  I  am  considering,  and  shall  not  fail  to 
act  when  satisfied  that  action  will  be  proper." 
That  Abraham  Lincoln  did  not  live  to  make 
another  announcement  on  this  question,  in 
which  the  more  vital  consequences  of 
the  great  Civil  War  were  wrapped  up,  ity  of  u* 

•  p  i'         1         '    n      I  Death, 

IS  one  or  our  national  misiortunes. 
In  the  light  of  what  has  come  from  the  bit- 
terer spirit  and  the  narrowed  views  which  pre- 
vailed in  the  work  of  reconstruction  after  his 
influence  was  withdrawn  we  can  measure  the 
calamity  of  his  death. 

We  are  nigh  to  half  a  century  from  the  time 
when  that  great  man  of  the  West  acted  his 
great  part  on  a  tragic  stage,  and  I 
think  the  world  agrees  that  his  figure  sure  of  us 
looms  grander  and  more  heroic  the 
farther  we  recede.'  The  fact  about  him  which 
time  discloses  more  and  more  is  this :  that  his 
greatness  is  measured,  like  that  of  Washing- 
ton, not  so  much  by  what  he  was  able  to  do  for 
the  cause  of  Union  and  freedom,  as  by  what 
he  was  able  to  6e  to  it.  It  was  not  his  part  to 
ride  upon  the  storm  which  rolled  out  of  the 
free  North  to  overwhelm  treason  and  slavery ; 
it  was  not  his  part  to  forge  its  thunderbolts, 
nor  to  hurl  them ;  it  was  his  sublimer  part  to 


300     A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

stand  like  a  firm,  strong  pillar  in  the  midst  of 
the  swaying  tempest  of  that  uncertain  time, 
for  a  tottering  nation  and  a  shaken  cause  to 
hold  themselves  fast  by.  That  is  what  he  was 
to  us ;  that  is  what  he  did  for  us ;  and  that 
is  the  kind  of  providence  in  human  affairs 
which  great  characters,  only,  of  the  grandest 
mould  and  make,  are  given  for.  How  much 
this  people  leaned  upon  him  while  they  fought 
their  weary  battle  out ;  how  much  they  took 
strength  from  his  strength,  patience  from  his 
patience,  faith  from  his  faith,  they  never  knew 
till  he  lay  dead  at  their  feet.  To  us  who  lived 
through  it,  what  an  appalling  day  was  that, 
"when,  right  in  the  moment  of  our  consummated 
triumph,  Lincoln  was  slain,  and  the  pillar  on 
•which  our  very  trust  in  one  another  had  rested 
more  than  we  understood  was  overthrown ! 
For  a  time  it  seemed  as  though  the  solid  earth 
had  sunk  away  from  our  feet  and  chaos  had 
come  again.  It  took  us  hours  to  believe  that 
all  our  victory  had  not  come  instantly  to 
naught,  and  that  all  the  long  battle  had  not 
been  fought  in  vain.  It  took  us  days  to  recover 
belief  in  the  reunion  and  rehabilitation  of  the 
republic  with  Lincoln  gone.  All  that  he  had 
been  to  us  began  to  dawn  upon  our  undey- 


LINCOLN  301 

standings  then.  We  began  then  to  know  what 
an  incarnation  of  democracy  he  had  been; 
what  a  soul  of  sincerity  and  verity  he  had  sup- 
plied to  the  cause  of  popular  freedom ;  with 
what  possession  his  great  character  had  folded 
itself  about  every  feeling  that  we  had  which 
made  us  patriotic,  democratic,  republican. 

And,  yet,  from  what  simplicity  of  nature 
that  influential  strength  of  the  man  had  come ! 
Here,  in  truth,  was  the  final  secret  of  it.  He 
had  kept  his  nature  as  it  was  given  him.  He 
was  so  little  a  world-made  man,  —  so  very 
much  a  God-made  man.  The  child  had  grown 
into  the  man,  — not  the  man  out  of  the  child. 
That  rare  kind  of  growth  must  preserve  the 
best  fibre  and  elasticity  of  being.  It  must 
have  helped  to  produce  the  quaint,  homely 
humor  which  some  people  mistook  strangely 
for  clownishness  and  levity.  Levity!  Who 
ever  looked  into  the  sad  eyes  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  when  his  great  burden  was  heavy 
upon  him,  and  believed  there  was  levity  in 
the  soul  of  the  man?  His  earnestness  was  of 
a  strain  too  deep  for  those  who  slandered  him 
that  way  to  understand. 

Some  have  said  that  it  was  fortunate  for 
Lincoln's  fame  that  he  diecj  when  he  did.  No 


302      A  STUDY  OF  GREATNESS  IN  MEN 

doubt  a  certain  consecration  of  his  memory 
was  produced  by  the  cruelty  and  martyrdom 
of  his  death ;  but  farther  than  that  there  seems 
no  ground  for  the  thought.  If  he  had  been 
left  with  us,  to  be  our  counselor  and  guide 
in  the  hard  return  from  war  to  peace,  we 
should  surely  have  come  by  a  shorter  and  a 
better  way  to  better  conclusions  than  we  have 
reached. 

But  no  matter ;  it  is  idle  to  speculate  on 
that.  The  important  thing  to  be  thought  of 
is,  that  we  thank  God  as  we  ought  to  do  for 
the  gift  of  this  man's  greatness  while  it  was 
ours,  and  that  we  do  not  let  ourselves  have 
lived  vainly  in  the  light  of  it.  If  we  mean  to 
be,  in  fact  and  truth,  the  democracy  that  we 
pretend  to  be  and  are  not;  if  we  genuinely 
wish  to  stand  toward  one  another,  as  fellow 
citizens  of  a  political  commonwealth,  in  the 
simple  relation  of  man  to  man,  and  give  to  one 
another  and  take  from  one  another  all  that 
men  can  give  and  take  in  a  perfected  social 
state,  he  has  intimated  to  us  how,  and  signi- 
fied the  kind  of  repubHcans  we  must  be.  If 
this  nation  is  to  be  truly  great,  it  must  be  great 
as  Lincoln  was,  by  verity  and  simpleness,  by 
honesty  and   earnestness;  its   politics  a  fair 


LINCOLN  303 

weighing  of  true  opinions;  its  diplomacy  a 
straight  acting  toward  just  purposes  and  ne- 
cessary ends ;  its  public  service  a  duty  and  an 
honor;  its  citizenship  a  precious  inheritance 
or  a  priceless  gift.  Let  us  have  faith  enough 
and  hope  enough  to  believe  that  the  time  of 
these  things  is  coming  yet ;  and  then,  not  till 
then,  will  the  monument  of  Abraham  Lincoln, 
exemplar  of  democracy  and  type  of  the  repub- 
lican mau;  be  builded  complete. 


